AMERICAN 
FHU MB -PRINTS 


KATE   STEPHENS 


fHB  81 1911 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

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AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 


IN  shorter  form  "The  New  England 
Woman"  appeared  in  The  Atlantic 
Monthly,  and  under  other  title  and 
form  "Up-to-Date  Misogyny"  and 
"Plagiarizing  Humors  of  Benjamin 
Franklin"  in  The  Bookman,  which 
periodicals  have  courteously  allowed 
republication 


AMERICAN 
THUMB-PRINTS 

METTLE     OF    OUR 
MEN    AND    WOMEN 

BY 

KATE  STEPHENS 


PHILADELPHIA    AND    LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT    COMPANY 

1905 


OF  THE 

UNIVEr^lTY 

OF 

ILiFORHy!^ 


Copyright,  1905 
By  J.  B.  LippiNcoTT  Company 


o^^jkzL^^^ 


Published  April,  1905 


Electrotyped  and  Printed  by 
J.  B.  Lippincott  Company,  Philadelphia,  U.  S.  A. 


IN  MOST  LOVING  MEMORY  OF 
MY  FATHER 

NELSON   TIMOTHY   STEPHENS 

WHOSE  RARE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  MEN  AND  OF  LAW 

WHOSE  SENSITIVENESS  TO  JUSTICE 

HUMAN  KINDLINESS 

AND  FINE  DISDAIN  FOR  SELF-ADVERTISEMENT 

ARE  STILL  CHERISHED  BY  THE  NOBLE  FOLK 

AMONG  WHOM  HE  SPENT 

THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  HIS  LIFE 

AT  WHOSE  INSTANCE  IN  GREAT  MEASURE 

AND  UPON  WHOSE  ADVICE 

THE  LAW  SCHOOL  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY 

SKETCHED  IN  THIS  BOOK 

WAS  IN  1878 

FOUNDED 


208256 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/americanthumbpriOOsteprich 


CONTENTS 

Pagx 

Puritans  of  the  West ' 11 

The  University  of  Hesperus 35 

Two  Neighbors  of  St.  Louis 87 

The  New  England  Woman 127 

A  New  England  Abode  of  the  Blessed 163 

Up-to-date  Misogyny  187 

"  The  Gullet  Science" 215 

Plagiarizing  Humors  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin    287 


PURITANS    OF    THE   WEST 


\ 


Let  nouther  lufe  of  friend  nor  feir  of  fais, 

Mufe  zow  to  mank  zour  Message,  or  hald  bak 

Ane  iot  of  zour  Commissioun,  ony  wayis 

Call  ay  quhite,  quhite,  and  blak,  that  quhilk  is  blak. 

First  he  descendit  bot  of  linage  small. 

As  commonly  God  usis  for  to  call, 

The  sempill  sort  his  summoundis  til  expres. 

John  Davidson 

If  it  be  heroism  that  we  require,  what  was  Troy 
town  to  this  ? 

Egbert  Louts  Stevenson 


PURITANS    OF    THE    WEST 

Of  local  phases  of  the  American  spirit, 
none  has  incited  more  discussion  than 
that  developed  in  Kansas.  The  notion 
that  the  citizens  of  the  State  are  some- 
what phrenetic  in  experimental  melior- 
ism ;  that  they  more  than  others  fall  into 
abnormal  sympathies  and  are  led  by 
aberrations  of  the  crowd— intoxications 
the  mind  receives  in  a  congregation  of 
men  pitched  to  an  emotional  key — this 
notion  long  ago  startled  peoples  more 
phlegmatic  and  less  prone  to  social 
vagaries. 

Closer  consideration  shows  the  Kan- 
sas populace  distinctly  simple  in  mental 
habit  and  independent  in  judgment.  Yet 
their  old-time  Grangerism  and  Green- 
backism,  and  their  still  later  Prohibi- 
tionism,  Populism,  and  stay  law  have 

caused  that  part  of  the  world  not  so 

11 


12  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

inclined  to  rainbow-chasing  to  ask  who 
they  as  a  people  really  are,  and  what 
psychopathy  they  suffer — to  assert  that 
they  are  dull,  unthinking,  or,  at  best, 
doctrinaire. 

This  judgment  antedates  our  day,  as 
we  said.  It  was  even  so  far  back  as  in 
the  time  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  when  Kan- 
sas was  not  near  the  force,  nor  the  prom- 
ise of  the  force,  it  has  since  become. 
And  it  was  in  that  earlier  and  poorer 
age  of  our  country  when  folks  queried  a 
man's  suitability  and  preparedness  for 
the  senatorial  office.  Then  when  Sena- 
torship  fell  to  General  James  Lane,  and 
some  one  questioned  the  Free-State  fight- 
er's fitness  for  his  duties.  President  Lin- 
coln is  said  to  have  hit  off  the  new 
Senator  and  the  new  State  with  '^Good 
enough  for  Kansas!''  and  a  shrug  of 
his  bony  shoulders.  Derogatory  catch- 
words have  had  a  knack  at  persisting 
since  men  first  tried  to  get  the  upper 
hand  of  one  another  by  ridicule,  and  the 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  13 

terse  unsympathy  and  curl  of  the  lip  of 
Lincoln's  sayings  have  kept  their  use  to 
our  day. 

One  outsider,  in  explaining  any  new 
vagary  of  the  Kansans,  suggests,  with 
sophomore  ease,  ^^The  foreign  ele- 
ment.'^  Another  tells  you,  convicting 
himself  of  his  own  charge,  ^*It  is  igno- 
rance— away  out  there  in  the  back 
woods.''  ^'Bad  laws,"  another  conclu- 
sively sets  down.  Opposed  to  all  these 
surmises  and  guesses  are  the  facts  that 
in  number  and  efficiency  of  schools  Kan- 
sas ranks  beyond  many  States,  and  that 
in  illiteracy  the  commonwealth  in  the 
last  census  showed  a  percentage  of  2.9 
— a  figure  below  certain  older  States, 
say  Massachusetts,  with  an  illiterate 
percentage  of  5.9,  or  New  York,  with  5.5. 
As  to  its  early  laws,  they  were  framed 
in  good  measure  by  men  and  women  * 

*  I  include  "  women"  because  Lucy  Stone  once 
told  me  she  draughted  some  of  the  Kansas  laws  for 
married  women  while  sitting  in  the  nursery  with 


14  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

of  New  England  blood — of  that  blood 
although  their  forebears  may  have 
pushed  westward  from  the  thin  soil  of 
New  England  three  generations  before 
the  present  Kansans  were  born.  Again 
its  citizens,  except  an  inconsiderable  and 
ineffective  minority,  are  Americans  in 
blood  and  tradition. 

It  is  in  truth  in  the  fact  last  named, 
in  the  American  birth  of  the  people  who 
gave,  and  still  give,  the  State  its  funda- 
mental key,  that  we  are  to  find  the  causes 
of  Kansas  neologism  and  desire  for  ex- 
periment in  every  line  that  promises 
human  betterment.  It  is  a  case  of  spir- 
itual heir-at-law — the  persistence  of 
what  the  great  ecclesiastical  reactionist 
of  our  day  has  anathematized  as  ^Hhe 
American  Spirit.''     For  each  new  ism 

her  baby  on  her  knee.  Other  women  worked  with 
her,  she  said.  Their  labor  was  in  the  fifties  of  the 
nineteenth  century — at  the  height  of  the  move- 
ment to  ameliorate  the  legal  condition  of  married 
women. 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  15 

the  Kansans  have  pursued  has  been  but 
another  form  and  working  in  the  popular 
brain  of  the  amicus  humani  generis  of 
the  eighteenth-century  Kevolutionists, 
or,  as  the  people  of  their  time  and  since 
have  put  it,  ^  liberty,  equality,  frater- 
nity.'' 

Kansas  was  settled  by  Americans, 
American  men  and  American  women 
possessed  by  the  one  dominating  idea  of 
holding  its  territory  and  its  wealth  to 
themselves  and  their  opinions.  They 
went  in  first  in  the  fifties  with  bayonets 
packed  in  Bible  boxes.  All  along  rail- 
ways running  towards  their  destination 
they  had  boarded  trains  with  the  future 
grasped  close  in  hand,  and  sometimes 
they  were  singing  Whittier  's  lines : 

"  We  go  to  rear  a  wall  of  men 
On  Freedom's  southern  line, 
And  plant  beside  the  cotton-tree 
The  rugged  Northern  pine! 


16  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

"  Upbearing,  like  the  Ark  of  old, 
The  Bible  in  our  van, 
We  go  to  test  the  truth  of  God 
Against  the  fraud  of  man." 

In  exalted  mood  they  had  chanted  this 
hymn  as  their  trains  pulled  into  stations 
farther  on  in  their  journey,  and  the 
lengthening  of  the  day  told  them  they 
were  daily  westering  with  the  sun.  They 
had  carried  it  in  their  hearts  with  Puri- 
tan aggressiveness,  with  Anglo-Saxon 
tenacity  and  sincerity,  as  their  steamers 
paddled  up  the  muddy  current  of  the 
Missouri  and  their  canvas-covered 
wagons  creaked  and  rumbled  over  the 
sod,  concealing  then  its  motherhood  of 
mighty  crops  of  corn  and  wheat,  upon 
which  they  were  to  build  their  home. 
They  were  enthusiasts  even  on  a  road 
beset  with  hostiles  of  the  slave  State  to 
the  east.  Their  enthusiasm  worked  out 
in  two  general  lines,  one  the  self-interest 
of  building  themselves  a  home — towns, 
schools,  churches, — the  other  the  ideal- 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  17 

ism  of  the  anti-slavery  faith.  They 
were  founding  a  State  which  was  within 
a  few  years  to  afford  to  northern  forces 
in  the  struggle  centring  about  slavery 
the  highest  percentage  of  soldiers  of 
any  commonwealth;  and  their  spirit 
forecast  the  sequent  fact  that  troops 
from  the  midst  of  their  self-immolation 
would  also  record  the  highest  percent- 
age of  deaths. 

They  came  from  many  quarters  to  that 
territorial  settlement  of  theirs,  but  the 
radical,  recalcitrant  stock  which  had 
nested  in  and  peopled  the  northeastern 
coast  of  our  country  was  in  the  notable 
majorities  from  Western  States — from 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Ohio,  and  Iowa;  and 
from  New  England,  New  York,  and 
Pennsylvania  also.  Some  came,  indeed, 
who  could  trace  no  descent  from  Puritan 
or  Quaker  or  Huguenot  forebear.  But 
there  was  still  the  potent  heirship  of 
spirit. 

To  these  men  nature  gave  the  gift  of 
2 


18  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

seeing  their  side  of  the  then  universal 
question.  She  added  a  living  sympathy 
with  workers,  and  an  acute  sense  of  the 
poverty  and  oppression  which  humanity 
at  large  is  always  suffering  from  those 
who  take  because  they  have  power.  A 
free  discussion  of  slavery  and  their  op- 
position to  slave-holding  had  put  this 
deep  down  in  their  hearts. 

Each  man  of  them — and  each  woman 
also — was  in  fixed  principle  and  earnest- 
ness a  pioneer,  in  pursuit  of  and  dwell- 
ing in  a  world  not  yet  before  the  eyes  of 
flesh  but  sun-radiant  to  the  eyes  of  the 
spirit — the  ideal  the  pioneer  must  ever 
see — and  holding  the  present  and  actual 
as  but  a  mote  in  the  beam  from  that 
central  light. 

From  a  more  humorous  point  of  view, 
each  man  was  clearly  a  Knight  of  La 
Mancha  stripped  of  the  mediaeval  and 
Spanish  trapping  of  his  prototype.  His 
Dulcinea — an  unexampled  combination 
of  idealism  and  practicality — his  much- 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  19 

enduring  wife,  upon  whose  frame  and 
anxious-eyed  face  were  stamped  a  yearn- 
ing for  the  graces  of  life.  Her  fervor, 
with  true  woman  strength,  was  ever  per- 
sistent. ^^I  always  compose  my  poems 
best,''  said  one  of  the  haler  of  these 
dames  whose  verses  piped  from  a  corner 
of  the  University  town's  morning  jour- 
nal, ^  ^  on  wash-day  and  over  the  tub. ' ' 

These  were  the  conditions  of  those 
men  and  women  of  the  fifties  and  early 
sixties  to  less  lifted,  more  fleshly  souls. 
The  old  enthusiasm  that  lighted  our  race 
in  1620  and  many  sequent  years  in  Mas- 
sachusetts Bay,  and  the  old  devotion 
that  led  the  Huguenots  and  other  op- 
pressed peoples  to  our  Southern  coasts 
and  on  ^  ^  over  the  mountains, ' '  were  kin- 
dled afresh.  And  the  old  exaltation  of 
the  descendants  of  these  many  peoples — 
the  uplifting  that  made  way  for  and 
supported  the  act  of  the  Fourth  of  July 
in  1776 — rose  anew.  The  flame  of  an 
idea  was  in  the  air  heating  and  refining 


20  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

the  grossest  spirits — and  the  subtle 
forces  of  the  Kansans'  vanguard  were 
far  from  the  grossest. 

Once  in  their  new  home  these  men  and 
women  lived  under  circumstances  a  peo- 
ple has  almost  never  thriven  under — 
circumstances  which  would  prey  upon 
every  fibre  of  calmness,  repose,  and 
sober-mindedness,  and  possibly  in  the 
end  deprive  their  folk  of  consideration 
for  the  past  and  its  judgments.  ^^  Gov- 
ern the  Kansas  of  1855  and  '56!"  ex- 
claimed Governor  Shannon  years  after 
that  time.  ^'You  might  as  well  have 
attempted  to  govern  the  devil  in  hell.'' 
^^ Shall  the  Sabbath  never  immigrate," 
cried  a  Massachusetts  woman  in  1855 
in  a  letter  to  friends  at  home,  ^^and  the 
commandments  too?" 

Among  this  people  was  little  presence 
of  what  men  had  wrought.  As  in  the 
early  settlements  of  our  Atlantic  sea- 
board, all  was  to  be  made,  everything  to 
be  done,  even  to  the  hewing  of  logs  for 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  21 

houses  and  digging  of  wells  for  water; 
and  in  Kansas  pressure  for  energy  and 
time  was  vastly  increased  over  those 
earlier  years  by  the  seaboard.  The 
draughting  of  laws  for  controlling  a 
mixed  population,  with  elements  in  it 
confessedly  there  for  turbulence  and 
bloodshed,  was  for  a  time  secondary  to 
shingle-making. 

Such  primitive  efforts  were  more  than 
a  generation  ago — in  fact,  fifty  years. 
But  the  spirit  with  which  those  early 
comers  inaugurated  and  carried  on  their 
settlement  did  not  perish  when  the  daily 
need  of  its  support  had  passed  away. 
It  still  abode  as  a  descent  of  spirit, 
meaning  an  inheritance  of  spirit,  a  con- 
tagion of  spirit,  and  to  its  characteristic 
features  we  can  to-day  as  easily  point — 
to  its  human  sympathies  and  willing- 
ness for  experiment — as  to  the  persist- 
ence of  a  physical  mark — the  Bourbon 
nose  in  royal  portraits,  say,  or  the  ^  ^  Aus- 
trian lips ' '  of  the  Hapsburg  mouth.    Its 


22  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

evidences  are  all  about  you  when  yon  are 
within  the  confines  of  the  present-day 
Kansans,  and  you  are  reminded  of  the 
Puritanism  which  still  subordinates  to 
itself  much  that  is  alien  in  Massachu- 
setts; or  you  think  of  the  sturdy  prac- 
ticality of  the  early  Dutch  which  still 
modifies  New  York;  or  you  may  go 
farther  afield  and  recall  the  most  persist- 
ent spirit  of  the  Gauls  of  Caesar,  novis 
plerumque  rebus  student,  which  to  our 
time  has  been  the  spirit  of  the  Gauls  of 
the  Empire  and  of  President  Loubet. 

The  Kansan  has  still  his  human-heart- 
edness  and  his  willingness  to  experiment 
for  better  things.  Exploded  hypotheses 
in  manufacture,  farming,  and  other  in- 
terests scattered  in  startling  frequency 
over  the  vast  acreage  of  his  State,  tes- 
tify to  these  traits. 

He  has  to  this  day  kept  his  receptivity 
of  mind.  Even  now  he  scorns  a  consid- 
eration for  fine  distinctions.  He  still 
loves  a  buoyant  optimism.    And  for  all 


PURITANS   OF  THE  WEST  23 

these  reasons  he  often  and  readily  grants 
faith  to  the  fellow  who  amuses  him,  who 
can  talk  loud  and  fast,  who  promises 
much,  and  who  gets  the  most  notices  in 
his  local  dailies.  He  is  like  the  author 
of  Don  Juan,  inasmuch  as  he  ^^  wants  a 
hero,"  and  at  times  he  is  willing  to  put 
up  with  as  grievous  a  one  as  was  foisted 
upon  the  poet.  In  the  end,  however,  he 
has  native  bed-rock  sense,  and  as  his 
politics  in  their  finality  show,  he  com- 
monly measures  rascals  aright.  But  in 
his  active  pursuit  and  process  of  finding 
them  out  he  has  offered  himself  a  spec- 
tacle to  less  simple-minded,  more  so- 
phisticated men. 

Some  years  ago,  in  a  grove  of  primeval 
oaks,  elms,  and  black-walnuts  neighbor- 
ing the  yellow  Kaw  and  their  University 
town,  those  settlers  of  early  days  held 
an  old-time  barbecue.  The  meeting  fell 
in  the  gold  and  translucence  of  the  Sep- 
tember that  glorifies  that  land.  Great 
crowds  of  men  and  women  came  by  rail 


24  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

and  by  wagon,  and  walking  about  in  the 
shade,  or  in  the  purple  clouds  that  rose 
from  the  trampings  of  many  feet  and 
stood  gleaming  in  the  sunshine,  they 
were  stretching  hands  to  one  another 
and  crying  each  to  some  new-discovered, 
old  acquaintance,  ^^Is  this  youT^  ^^How 
long  is  it  now?'^  ^^Thirty-five  years T' 
^^YouVe  prospered!''  and  such  words 
as  old  soldiers  would  use  having  fought 
a  great  fight  together — not  for  pelf  or 
loot  but  for  moral  outcome — and  had 
then  lost  one  another  for  many  a  year. 

Moving  among  them  you  would  read- 
ily see  signs  of  that  ^^  possession  of  the 
god''  the  Greeks  meant  when  they  said 
ivdoufftafffio^.  Characteristic  marks  of  it 
were  at  every  turn.  There  was  the 
mobile  body — nervous,  angular,  express- 
ive— and  a  skin  of  fine  grain.  There 
was  the  longish  hair,  matted,  if  very  fine, 
in  broad  locks ;  if  coarse,  standing  about 
the  head  in  electric  stiffness  and  con- 
fusion— the  hair  shown  in  the  print  of 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  25 

John  Brown,  in  fact.  There  were  eyes 
often  saddened  by  the  sleeplessness  of 
the  idealist — eyes  with  an  uneasy  glitter 
and  a  vision  directed  far  away,  as  if 
not  noting  life,  nor  death,  nor  daily 
things  near  by,  but  fixed  rather  upon 
some  startling  shape  on  the  horizon. 
The  teeth  were  inclined  to  wedge- shape 
and  set  far  apart.  There  was  a  firmly 
shnt  and  finely  curved  mouth.  ^^We 
make  our  own  mouths,^'  says  Dr. 
Holmes.  About  this  people  was  smoul- 
dering fire  which  might  leap  into  flame 
at  any  gust  of  mischance  or  oppres- 
sion. 

This  describes  the  appearance  in 
later  decades  of  the  corporate  man  of 
the  fifties  and  early  sixties — 

"  to  whom  was  given 
So  much  of  earth,  so  much  of  heaven, 
And  such  impetuous  blood." 

A  sky  whose  mystery  and  melancholy, 
whose  solitary  calm  and  elemental  rage 


26  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

stimulate  and  depress  even  his  penned 
and  grazing  cattle,  has  spread  over 
him  for  more  than  a  generation.  With 
his  intensity  and  his  predisposition 
to  a  new  contrat  social  he  and  his 
descendants  have  been  subjected  to  Kan- 
sas heat,  which  at  times  marks  more 
than  one  hundred  in  the  shade,  and  to 
a  frost  that  leaves  the  check  of  the  ther- 
mometer far  below  zero.  He  and  his 
children,  cultivators  of  their  rich  soil, 
have  been  subject  to  off-years  in  wheat 
and  corn.  They  have  endured  a  period 
of  agricultural  depression  prolonged 
because  world-wide.  They  have  been 
subject,  too,  to  the  manipulation  of 
boomers. 

Most  lymphatic  men — any  Boeotian,  in 
fact,  but  it  is  long  before  his  fat  bottom 
lands  will  make  a  Boeotian  out  of  a  Kan- 
san — ^most  lymphatic  men  ploughing, 
planting,  and  simply  and  honestly  living 
would  be  affected  to  discontent  by  the 
thunder  of  booms  and  their  kaleidoscopic 


PURITANS  OF  THE   WEST  27 

deceit.  Clever  and  sometimes  unprin- 
cipled promoters  representing  more 
clever  and  unprincipled  bond-sellers  in 
Eastern  counting-houses  sought  to  incite 
speculation  and  lead  the  natural  idealist 
by  the  glamour  of  town-building,  and 
county-forming  booms,  railway  and  irri- 
gation booms,  and  countless  other 
projects. 

They  played  with  his  virtuous  foibles 
and  fired  his  imagination.  He  gave  him- 
self, his  time,  his  men,  his  horses,  his 
implements  for  construction;  his  lands 
for  right  of  way.  He  hewed  his  black 
walnuts  and  elms  into  sleepers,  and 
sawed  his  bulky  oaks  for  bridges.  He 
called  special  elections  and  voted  aid  in 
bonds.  He  gave  perpetual  exemption 
from  taxes.  Rugged  enthusiast  that  he 
was  he  gave  whatever  he  had  to  give, — 
but  first  he  gave  faith  and  altruistic 
looking-out  for  the  interests  of  the  other 
man.  Great  popular  works  still  abiding 
— cathedrals  in  Europe  are  perhaps  the 


28  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

most  noted — were  put  up  by  like  kin- 
dling of  the  human  spirit. 

His  road  was  made  ready  for  sleepers, 
and  funds  for  purchasing  iron  he  for- 
mally handed  the  promoters, — since 
which  day  purslane  and  smartweed  and 
golden  sunflowers  have  cloaked  the  ser- 
pentine grades  which  his  own  hands  had 
advanced  at  the  rate  of  more  than  a 
mile  between  each  dawn  and  sunset. 

One  direct  relation  and  force  of  these 
inflated  plans  to  the  Kansan  have  been 
that  they  often  swerved  and  controlled 
the  values  of  his  land,  and  the  prices  of 
those  commodities  from  which  a  soil- 
worker  supports  a  family  hungry,  grow- 
ing, and  in  need  of  his  commonwealth's 
great  schools.  And  the  man  himself, 
poor  futurist  and  striver  after  the  idea, 
with  a  soul  soaring  heavenward  and 
hands  stained  and  torn  with  weed-pull- 
ing and  corn-husking! — ^his  ready  faith, 
his  tendency  to  seek  a  hero,  his  brushing 
aside  of  conservative  intuition,  his  me- 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  29 

liorism,  his  optimism,  his  receptivity  to 
ideas,  his  dear  humanness — in  other 
words,  his  charm,  his  grace,  his  individ- 
uality, his  Americanism — wrought  him 
harm. 

Our  corporate  man,  loving,  aspiring, 
working,  waiting,  started  out  with  a 
nervous  excitability  already  given.  He 
was  a  man  with  a  bee  in  his  bonnet.  He 
was  seeking  ideal  conditions.  Originally 
he  was  a  reactionist  against  feudal  bond- 
age, the  old  bondage  of  human  to  human 
and  of  human  to  land.  Later  his  soul 
took  fire  at  the  new  bondage  of  human 
to  wage  and  job.  He  would  have  every 
man  and  woman  about  him  as  free  in 
person  as  he  was  in  idea. 

What  wonder  then  that  he  or  his  de- 
scendent  spirit  in  the  midst  of  agricult- 
ural distress  enacted  a  mortgage  equity 
or  stay  law,  and  determined  that  that 
law  should  apply  to  mortgages  in  exist- 
ence at  the  passage  of  the  act !  He  it  is 
of  the  all-embracing  Populism,  the  out- 


30  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

reaching  Prohibitionism,  the  husband- 
man-defensive Grangerism.  Shall  we 
not  humanly  expect  him,  and  those  suf- 
fering the  contagion  of  his  noble  single- 
ness, to  clutch  at  plans  for  a  social  mil- 
lennium? ^^  Heaven  is  as  easily  reached 
from  Kansas,"  wrote  an  immigrant  of 
1855,  ^  ^  as  from  any  other  point. ' ' 

He  values  openly  what  the  world  in 
its  heart  knows  is  best,  and  like  all 
idealists  foreruns  his  time.  The  legend 
is  always  about  him  of  how  the  men  and 
women  of  the  early  fifties  hitched  their 
wagon  to  a  star — and  the  stars  in  his 
infinity  above  are  divinely  luminous  and 
clear.  His  meliorism — ^which  would  lead 
his  fellows  and  then  the  whole  world 
aright — is  nothing  if  not  magnificent. 

But  although  he  grubs  up  the  wild  rose 
and  morning-glory,  ploughing  his  mel- 
low soil  deep  for  settings  of  peach  and 
grape,  and  supplants  the  beauty  of  the 
purple  iris  and  prairie  verbena  with  the 
practicalities  of  corn  and  wheat,  he  has 


PURITANS   OF   THE  WEST  31 

yet  to  learn  the  moral  effect  of  time  and 
aggregation — that  a  moon's  cycle  is  not 
a  millennium,  a  June  wind  fragrant  with 
the  honey  of  his  white  clover  not  all 
of  his  fair  climate,  and  that  a  politi- 
cal colossus  cannot  stand  when  it  has 
no  more  substantial  feet  than  the  yellow 
clay  which  washes  and  swirls  in  the 
river  that  waters  his  great  State.  In 
reality  his  excess  of  faith  hinders  the 
way  to  conditions  his  idealism  has  ever 
been  seeking. 

The  Kansan  is,  after  all,  but  a  phase 
— a  magnificent  present-day  example 
and  striving — of  the  mighty  democratic 
spirit  which  has  been  groping  forward 
through  centuries  towards  its  ideal,  the 
human  race 's  ideal  of  ideals.  In  his  set- 
ting forth  of  the  genius  of  his  people  for 
democracy  and  the  tendency  of  his  blood 
for  experiment  and  reform — according 
to  that  advice  to  the  Thessalonians  of 
an  avaunt  courier  of  democracy,  to  prove 
all  things  and  hold  fast  to  that  which  is 


32  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

good — ^he  is  led  at  times  upon  miry, 
quaggy  places  and  by  the  very  largeness 
of  his  sympathies  enticed  upon  quick- 
sands which  the  social  plummet  of  our 
day  has  not  yet  sounded. 


THE   UNIVERSITY  OF 
HESPERUS 


And  not  by  eastern  windows  only, 

When  daylight  comes,  comes  in  the  light, 

In  front,  the  sun  climbs  slow,  how  slowly, 
But  westward,  look,  the  land  is  bright. 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough 

No  university  has  anywhere  ever  become  a  great 
influence,  or  anything  but  a  school  for  children, 
which  was  not  wholly  or  almost  wholly  in  the  hands 
of  the  faculty  or  teaching  body.  The  faculty  is  the 
teaching  body.  If  you  have  the  right  sort  of  faculty, 
you  have  a  university  though  you  have  only  a  tent 
to  lecture  in.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  try  to  make 
a  university  out  of  a  board  of  sagacious  business  men 
acting  as  trustees,  and  treat  the  professors  simply  as 
"hired  men,"  bound  to  give  the  college  so  many 
hours  a  week,  you  may  have  a  good  school  for 
youths,  but  you  will  get  no  enlightening  influence 
or  force  out  of  it  for  the  community  at  large. 

A  writer  in  The  Nation,  1889 


THE   UNIVERSITY  OF 
HESPERUS 

During  a  great  national  struggle  for 
human  rights,  Laurel  Town  was  touched 
by  the  high  seriousness  which  rises  from 
sincerity  to  the  idea  of  human  liberty 
and  the  laying  down  of  lives  in  defence 
of  that  idea.  Its  baptism  and  its  early 
years  were  thus  purely  of  the  spirit. 

A  miniature  burg,  it  snuggles  upon 
broad,  fat  lands,  semicircling  the  height 
that  rises  to  the  west.  From  the  hill- 
top the  tiny  city  is  half-buried  in  green 
leaves.  Looking  beyond  and  to  the  mid- 
dle distance  of  the  landscape,  you  find 
rich  bottoms  of  orchard  and  of  corn,  and 
the  Tiber-yellow  waters  of  a  broad  river 
running  through  their  plenty. 

First  immigrants  to  this  country— 
those  who  came  in  back  in  the  fifties — 
discovered  the  hill 's  likeness  to  the  great 
Acropolis    of   Athens,   and   determined 

35 


36  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

that  upon  it,  as  upon  the  heights  of  the 
ancient  city  of  the  golden  grasshopper, 
the  Staters  most  sacred  temple  should  be 
built.  Thus  were  inspired  library  and 
museum,  laboratories  and  lecture-rooms, 
of  the  University  of  Hesperus,  whose 
roofs  are  gleaming  in  the  vivid  air  to- 
day just  as  in  some  ancient  gem  a  dia- 
mond lying  upon  clustering  gold  sends 
shafts  of  light  through  foliations  of  red 
metal. 

The  brow  of  this  hill  beetles  toward 
the  south,  but  instead  of  the  blue  waters 
of  the  Saronic  Gulf  which  Sophocles  in 
jocund  youth  saw  dancing  far  at  sea, 
Hesperus  students  sight  hills  rolling  to 
the  horizon,  and  thickets  of  elms  and 
poplars  fringing  Indian  Creek,  and  in- 
stead of  the  Pentelic  mountains  in  the 
northeast  they  catch  the  shimmering 
light  of  the  green  ledges  and  limestone 
crests  of  the  northern  edge  of  the  valley 
the  river  has  chiselled. 

But  how,  you  ask — thinking  of  the 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         37 

fervor  of  the  immigrants  of  1854  and 
'55 — ^how  did  this  university  come  into 
being?  In  stirring  and  tentative  times. 
The  institution  was  first  organized  by 
Presbyterians,  who  later  accepted  a  fate 
clearly  foreordained,  and  sold  to  the 
Episcopalians.  This  branch  of  the 
church  universal  christened  the  educa- 
tional infant  Lawrence  University,  after 
a  Boston  merchant,  who  sent  ten  thou- 
sand dollars  conditioned  as  a  gift  on 
a  like  subscription.  The  institution  to 
this  time  was  ''on  paper,''  as  these 
founders  said  of  early  towns — that  is, 
a  plan,  a  scheme,  a  possibility.  It  finally 
became  the  kernel  of  the  University  of 
Hesperus  when  the  State  accepted  from 
Coligress  a  grant  of  seventy-two  square 
miles  of  land. 

''There  shall  be  two  branches  of  the 
University,"  the  charter  reads,  "a  male 
and  a  female  branch. ' '  In  clearer  Eng- 
lish, the  institution  was  to  be  open  to 
men  and  women. 


38  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Seeds  of  the  convictions  which  ad- 
mitted women  to  instruction  had  long 
been  germinating,  even  before  the  inde- 
pendence of  women  was  practically  de- 
nied by  the  great  Eeformation.  The 
idea  was  in  the  mind  of  our  race  when 
we  were  north-of-Europe  barbarians. 
It  found  sporadic  expression  all  through 
our  literature.  It  is  back  of  Chaucer  in 
annals  of  the  people  and  later  in  such 
chroniclers  as  Holinshed.  Bishop  Bur- 
net, historian  of  his  ^'Own  Time,'' 
and  also  Fuller,  he  of  the  human 
*^  Worthies,''  determined  that  ^^the 
sharpness  of  the  wit  and  the  sudden- 
ness of  the  conceits  of  women  needed 
she-schools."  Later  Mary  Woolstone- 
craft  wrote:  ^^But  I  still  insist  that  not 
only  the  virtue  but  the  knowledge  of  the 
two  sexes  should  be  the  same  in  nature, 
if  not  in  degree,  and  that  women,  con- 
sidered not  only  as  moral  but  rational 
creatures,  ought  to  endeavor  to  acquire 
human  virtues  by  the  same  means  as 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         39 

men,  instead  of  being  educated  like  a 
fanciful  kind  of  half -being. ' '  And  that 
moral  and  prudent  sampler,  Hannah 
More,  declared:  *^I  call  education  not 
that  which  smothers  a  woman  with  ac- 
complishments, but  that  which  tends  to 
confirm  a  firm  and  regular  system  of 
character.  ^ ' 

A  score  of  the  names  of  these  fore- 
workers  for  human  liberty  are  known  to 
us.  But  the  names  that  are  not  known! 
— the  pathos  of  it !  that  we  cannot,  look- 
ing below  from  our  rung  in  the  ladder, 
tell  the  countless  who  have  striven,  and 
fallen  striving,  that  we  are  here  because 
they  were  there,  and  that  to  them,  often 
unrecognized  and  unthanked,  our  op- 
portunities are  due.  They  foreran  their 
times,  and  their  struggle  made  ours  pos- 
sible. 

"  'Tis  not  what  man  Does  which  exalts  him,  but 

what  man  Would  do !" 

But  the  immediate  thought  or  impulse 
to  make  our  Western  State  institutions 


40  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

co-educational,  to  give  to  the  daughters 
the  collegiate  leisure  and  learning  of 
the  sons — to  whom  or  to  what  shall  we 
trace  this  idea!  They  used  to  explain 
it  in  Hesperus  by  telling  you,  ^ '  The  peo- 
ple about  us  are  for  the  most  part  New 
Englanders  in  blood,  you  know,  perhaps 
not  one,  certainly  not  more  than  two 
generations  removed  to  more  genial 
lands,  and  still  retaining  the  rigor  and 
tenacity  and  devotion  to  principle  of 
that  stock."  But  one  naturally  an- 
swered this  by  saying,  ^  ^  In  New  England 
they  did  not  in  the  fifties  and  sixties  give 
their  daughters  the  educational  oppor- 
tunities they  gave  their  sons.  In  those 
decades  there  were  attempts  at  women's 
colleges  outside  New  England,  but  none 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Williams,  Dart- 
mouth, Amherst,  Harvard,  or  Yale." 

The  better  reason  is  the  historic — 
noted  in  every  movement  of  our  Aryan 
race.  In  this  is  found  what  New  Eng- 
land civilization  has  done,  not  in  Hes- 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         41 

perus  alone,  but  in  Wisconsin,  in  Cali- 
fornia, in  Minnesota,  and  wherever  else 
it  has  united  with  other  forces,  and  lost 
the  self-consciousness  and  self-compla- 
cency which  in  our  generation  are  dis- 
tinguishing and  abiding  traits  upon  its 
own  granitic  soil.  Prejudices  which  eat 
energy  and  dwarf  activity  colonists  have 
commonly  left  behind,  whether  they  have 
entered  the  swift  black  ship  of  the  sea 
or  the  canvas-covered  wagon  of  the 
prairie.  This  was  said  of  those  who 
sailed  westward  and  built  up  ancient 
Syracuse  some  twenty-six  centuries 
agone,  and  it  is  true  also  of  the  colonists 
of  these  later  days. 

The  drawing  up  of  the  charter  of  the 
University  of  Hesperus  shows  how 
humanly,  simply,  and  freely  State  build- 
ing may  be  done.  Judge  Chadwick,  of 
Laurel  Town,  gives  the  candid  narra- 
tive: 

^'In  the  ispring  of  1864  the  Misses 
Chapin  and  Miss  Elizabeth  Watson,  who 


42  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

had  established  a  school  here,  and  who 
were  anxious  that  the  University  should 
be  organized,  besought  Governor  Robin- 
son to  see  that  it  was  done.  He,  or  they 
(or  perhaps  but  one  of  them),  came  to 
me  and  insisted  that  I  should  go  to  the 
capital  and  secure  the  passage  of  an  act 
organizing  the  University.  The  session 
of  the  Legislature  was  near  its  close.  I 
went  to  the  capital.  In  the  State  library 
I  hunted  up  the  various  charters  of  simi- 
lar institutions,  and  taking  the  Michigan 
University  charter  for  my  guide,  drafted 
the  act  to  organize  the  University  of 
the  State.  .  .  .  Judge  Emery  was  the 
member  of  the  House.  ...  I  do  not  re- 
member who  was  the  Senator.  ...  I 
gave  the  draft  to  Judge  Emery,  who  in- 
troduced it  into  the  house,  and  by  sus- 
pension of  the  rules  got  it  through.  It 
went  through  the  Senate  in  the  same 
way,  and  was  approved  by  the  governor 
■ — Carney.'' 

But  the  seed  of  fire  from  which  this 


THE   UNIVERSITY    OF   HESPERUS         43 

University  sprang  in  the  days  when  men 
were  fighting  for  unity,  for  an  idea — 
this  you  cannot  understand  without  a 
word  about  the  brilliant  essence  that 
enwraps  you  in  that  land — Hesperus 
air  and  light.  This  ether  no  man  can 
describe.  It  is  as  clear  as  a  diamond 
of  finest  quality,  and  each  infinitesimal 
particle  has  a  thousand  radiant  facets. 
You  think  to  take  it  in  your  hand.  It  is 
as  intangible  as  a  perfume,  as  illusive 
as  the  hopes  of  man's  ultimate  perfec- 
tion. The  colors  of  liquid  rose  are 
hidden  in  it  and  the  glow  of  gold,  and  it 
gives  flame  to  the  dullest  matter.  It 
glances  upon  a  gray  tree-trunk,  and  the 
trunk  glitters  in  purple  and  silver- white. 
It  is  so  limpid  and  dry  that  a  hill  or  a 
bush,  or  a  grazing  sheep  far  away, 
stands  out  in  clear  relief.  It  vitalizes. 
It  whispers  of  the  infinite  life  of  life. 
Like  the  sea,  it  presses  upon  you  a  con- 
sciousness of  illimitability  and  immeas- 
urable strength.     It  is  ^^most  pellucid 


44  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

air/'  like  that  in  wliich  the  chorus  of 
the  *^ Medea''  says  the  Athenians  were 
*  *  ever  delicately  marching. ' ' 

It  is  as  like  the  atmosphere  of  Italy 
as  the  sturdy  peach-blossoms  which 
redden  Hesperus  boughs  in  March  are 
like  the  softer  almond-flowers.  The 
same  indescribable  grace  and  radiance 
are  in  both  essences.  But  there  are  the 
Hesperus  blizzards — vast  rivers  of  icy 
air  which  sweep  from  upper  currents 
and  ensphere  the  softness  and  translu- 
cent loveliness  of  the  earth  with  such 
frosts  as  are  said  to  fill  all  heaven 
between  the  stars. 

Under  such  dynamic  skies  young  men 
and  women  have  been  gathering  now 
these  forty  years — before  the  September 
equinox  has  fairly  quenched  the  glow  of 
summer  heat.  During  a  long  aestivation 
a  sun  burning  in  an  almost  cloudless 
heaven  has  beaten  upon  them  day  by 
day.  The  glow  has  purified  and  ex- 
panded their  skin,  has  loosened  their 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         45 

joints,  and  clothed  them  in  the  supple 
body  of  the  south.  Through  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night  ten  thousand  stars  have 
shone  above  their  slumbers,  and  wind 
voices  out  of  space  have  phu-phy-phis- 
pered  through  secretive  pines  and  rolled 
tz-tz-tz  upon  the  leathery  leaves  of  oaks. 
Such  days  and  nights  have  been  over 
them  since  the  wild  grape  tossed  its 
fragrant  blossoms  in  damp  ravines  in 
the  passion  of  May. 

These  students  have  come  from  all 
kinds  of  homes,  from  meagre  town 
houses,  from  the  plainest  and  most  for- 
lorn farm-houses,  and  from  other  houses 
laden  and  bursting  with  plenty — and 
plenty  in  Hesperus  is  always  more 
plenty  than  plenty  anywhere  else.  Many 
of  these  young  people  have  been  nurt- 
ured delicately,  but  a  large  number  have 
doubtless  tasted  the  bitterness  of  over- 
work and  the  struggle  of  life  before  their 
teens. 

Perhaps  their  parents  came  to  Hes- 


46  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

perus  newly  wedded,  or  in  the  early- 
years  of  married  life  with  a  brood  of 
little  children.  If  their  coming  was  not 
in  the  stridulous  cars  of  some  Pacific  or 
Santa  Fe  railway,  then  it  was  over  the 
hard-packed  soil  in  most  picturesque  of 
pioneer  fashions — a  huge  canvas-cov- 
ered wagon  carrying  the  family  cook- 
stove,  beds,  and  apparel,  and,  under  its 
creaking  sides,  kettles  for  boilers,  pails 
for  fetching  water  from  the  nearest  run, 
and  axes  to  cut  wood  for  evening  fires. 
Every  article  the  family  carried  must 
answer  some  requirement  or  use.  The 
horses,  too,  have  their  appointed  tasks, 
for,  the  journey  once  accomplished,  they 
will  mark  off  the  eighty  acres  the  family 
are  going  to  pre-empt,  and  afterwards 
pull  the  plough  through  the  heavy  mala- 
rious sod. 

On  the  seat  of  the  wagon  the  wife  and 
mother,  wrapped  in  extremes  of  cold  in 
a  patchwork  quilt,  at  times  nursed  the 
baby,   and  in  any  case   drove  with  a 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS  47 

workmanlike  hand.  John  Goodman  was 
sometimes  back  with  the  collie,  snapping 
his  blacksnake  at  the  cattle  and  urging 
them  on.  But  oftenest  father  and 
mother  were  up  in  the  seat,  and  boy  and 
girl  trooping  behind  in  barefooted  and 
bareheaded  innocence,  enjoying  happy 
equality  and  that  intimate  contact  with 
the  cows  which  milky  udders  invite. 

Now  this,  or  some  way  like  this,  was 
the  introduction  of  a  quota  of  Hesperus 
men  and  women  to  their  fat  earth  and 
electric  atmosphere.  It  is  therefore  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  these  young  peo- 
ple come  to  their  University  with  little 
of  the  glamour  nourished  by  delicate  en- 
vironment and  the  graces  of  life.  Their 
earliest  years  have  been  spent  upon  the 
bed-rock  of  nature  wrestling  with  the 
hardest  facts  and  barest  realities.  They 
have  suffered  the  deprivations  and  the 
unutterable  trials  of  patience  and  faith 
which  the  world  over  are  the  lot  of  pio- 
neers;   and  they  have  had  the  returns 


48  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

of  their  courage.  Every  self-respecting 
man  and  boy  has  been,  perhaps  still  is, 
expected  to  do  the  work  of  two  men. 
Every  woman  and  girl  to  whom  the  god 
of  circumstance  had  not  been  kind  must 
be  ready  to  perform,  alike  and  equally 
well,  the  duties  of  man  or  woman — 
whichever  the  hour  dictated.  ^^  Hes- 
perus,'' says  an  unblushing  old  adage 
of  the  fifties — '^Hesperus  is  heaven  to 
men  and  dogs  and  hell  to  women  and 
horses. ' ' 

But  from  whatever  part  of  the  State 
the  students  come  to  their  University, 
he  and  she  commonly  come — they  are 
not  sent.  The  distinction  is  trite,  but 
there  is  in  it  a  vast  difference.  In  many 
cases  they  have  made  the  choice  and 
way  for  themselves.  They  have  earned 
money  to  pay  their  living  while  at 
school,  and  they  expect,  during  the  three, 
four,  or  five  years  they  are  in  their  in- 
tellectual Canaan,  to  spend  vacations  in 
work — in  harvesting  great  wheat-fields 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS  49 

of  Philistia,  or  in  some  other  honest 
bread-winning.  They  are  so  close  to 
nature,  and  so  radiantly  strong  in  indi- 
viduality, that  no  one  of  them,  so  far  as 
rumor  goes,  has  ever  resorted  to  the 
commonest  method  of  the  Eastern  impe- 
cunious collegian  for  filling  his  cob- 
webbed  purse  with  gold.  The  nearest 
approach  I  know  to  such  zeal  was  the  in- 
stance of  the  student  who  slept  (brave 
fellow)  scot-free  in  an  undertaker's 
establishment.  He  answered  that  func- 
tionary's night-bell.  Then  he  earned 
half-dollars  in  rubbing  up  a  coffin  or 
washing  the  hearse;  adding  to  these 
duties  the  care  of  a  church,  milking  of 
cows,  tending  of  furnaces,  digging  of 
flower-beds,  beating  of  carpets,  and  any 
other  job  by  which  a  strong  and  inde- 
pendent hand  could  win  honest  money 
for  books  and  clothing  and  food.  It  was 
as  true  for  him  now  as  when  Dekker, 
fellow-player  with  Shakespeare  and  ^^a 

high-flier  of  wit  even  against  Ben  Jon- 
4 


50  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

son  himself" — to  use  Anthony  a  Wood's 
phrase — when  Dekker  sang — 

"  Then  he  that  patiently  want's  burden  bears, 
No  burden  bears,  but  is  a  king,  a  king. 

0  sweet  content,  0  sweet  content! 
Work  apace,  apace,  apace, 
Honest  labor  bears  a  lovely  face. 
Then  hey  nonny,  nonny;   hey  nonny,  nonny/^ 

To  one  young  man,  whose  course  was 
preparing  him  for  studies  of  Knox's 
theology  upon  Knox's  own  heath,  a  har- 
vest of  forty  acres  of  wheat  brought  a 
competence,  as  this  arithmetic  will  show : 
40  X  50  X  $0.50  =  $1000.  He  planted, 
he  said,  in  the  early  days  of  September, 
before  leaving  for  college,  and  cut  the 
grain  after  commencement  in  June. 
The  blue-green  blades  barely  peeped 
through  the  glebe  during  winter.  When 
springtime  came,  and  the  hot  sun  shone 
upon  the  steaming  earth,  and  the  spirit 
of  growth  crept  into  the  roots,  an  invalid 
father — the  young  planter  being  still  in 
academic  cassock — kept  the  fences  up 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF  HESPERUS         51 

and  vagrant  cows  from  mowing  the  crop 
under  their  sweet  breath.  Other  men 
often  told  of  like  ways  of  earning  not 
only  college  bread  but  also  college 
skittles. 

Women  students  had  commonly  not 
so  good  a  chance  at  wresting  German 
lyrics  or  Plato's  idealism  from  a  wheat- 
furrow.  Keport  of  such  advantages  at 
least  never  reached  my  ear.  But  this 
may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  women  are 
reticent  about  the  means  of  their  suc- 
cess, while  men  delight  to  dwell  upon 
their  former  narrow  circumstances  and 
triumphant  exit  from  such  conditions. 

Some  Hesperus  girl  may  have  made 
money  in  hay,  and  indeed  have  made 
the  hay  as  charmingly  as  Madame  de 
Sevigne  reports  herself  to  have  done — 
and  certainly,  in  Hesperus  conditions, 
without  the  episode  of  the  recalcitrant 
footman  which  Mistress  de  Sevigne  re- 
lates. Now  and  then  a  young  woman  did 
say   that    she    was    living    during   her 


52  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

studies  on  funds  she  herself  had  earned. 
One  doughty  maiden,  *^a  vary  parfit, 
gentil  knight/'  her  face  ruddy  with 
healthy  blood,  her  muscles  firm  and 
active — such  a  girl  said  one  day,  in  ex- 
tenuation of  her  lack  of  Greek  composi- 
tion, that  ^^her  duties  had  not  permitted 
her  to  prepare  it. ' ' 

^^But  that  is  your  duty,  to  prepare  it," 
I  answered.  ^'Are  you  one  of  those  stu- 
dents who  never  allow  studies  to  inter- 
fere with  ^  business  T' 

**No,''  she  said,  quickly;  ^^but  let  me 
tell  you  how  it  happened.  The  boarding- 
house  where  I  stay  is  kept  by  a  friend  of 
my  mother.  She  offers  me  board  if  I 
will  help  her.  So  I  get  up  at  five  in  the 
morning  and  cook  breakfast,  and  after  I 
have  cleaned  up  I  come  up  here.  In  the 
afternoon  I  sweep  and  dust,  and  it  takes 
me  till  nearly  dark.  The  evening  is  the 
only  time  I  have  for  preparing  four 
studies. ' ' 

What  became  of  this  girl,  you  ask? 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         53 

She  married  a  professor  in  an  Eastern 
college. 

It  is  well  to  reiterate,  however,  in 
order  to  convey  no  false  impression  of 
Hesperus  sturdiness  and  self-reliance, 
that  many,  probably  a  majority,  of  the 
students  were  supported  by  their  natu- 
ral protectors.  But  it  is  clear  that  there 
is  more  self -maintenance — self-reliance 
in  money  matters — at  the  Hesperus  Uni- 
versity than  in  any  college  generally 
known  in  the  East,  and  that  the  methods 
of  obtaining  self-succor  are  at  times 
novel  and  resultant  from  an  agricultural 
environment.  In  evidence  that  there  are 
students  more  fortunate — one  should 
rather  say  more  moneyed,  for  the  bless- 
ings of  money  are  not  always  apparent 
to  the  inner  eye — are  the  secret  societies 
which  flourish  among  both  men  and 
women.  The  club  or  society  houses,  for 
the  furnishing  of  which  carte  blanche 
has  been  given  the  individual  humanely 
known  as  interior  decorator,  see  not  in- 


64  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

frequently  courtesies  from  one  Greek 
letter  society  to  another,  then  and  there 
kindly  wives  of  the  professors  matron- 
izing.* 

*  Other  societies  also  have  vitality.  The  sortie 
of  a  handful  of  students  one  November  night  fol- 
lowing election,  a  dinner  each  year  celebrates. 
Grangers  supposedly  inimical  to  the  interests  of 
the  University  had  won  at  the  polls.  The  moon 
shone  through  a  white,  frosty  air;  the  earth  was 
hard  and  resonant.  What  the  skulkers  accom- 
plished and  the  merry  and  hortative  sequent  to 
their  furtive  feast  were  told  at  the  time  by  the 
beloved  professor  of  Latin,  the  "  prof essoris 
alicujus.'' 

"t.  c.'s"  horribiles. 

Jam  noctis  media  hora.    In  coelo  nubila  spissa 
Stellas  abstulerant.    Umbrarum  tempus  erat  quo 
Horrenda  ignavis  monstra  apparent.    Pueri  tum 
Parvi  matribus  intus  adhaerent.     Non  gratiorem 
Noctem  fur  unquam  invenit.    Sed  qui  veniunt  post 
Hanc  aedem  veterem?    Celebrantne  aliqua  horrida 

sacra 
Mercurio  furum  patrono?    Discipuline? 
Non  possunt !     Tuti  in  lectis  omnes  requiescunt ! 
Estne  sodalicium  studiosorum  relevans  se 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         55 

An  early  introduction  into  the  battle  of 
life  breeds  in  us  humans  practicality  and 
utilitarianism.  Most  unfortunately  it 
disillusions.    It  takes  from  the  imagina- 

Magnis  a  curis  ?    Sed  cur  hue  conveniunt  tarn 
Furtivi?     In  manibus  quidnam  est  vel  sub  tegu- 

mentis  ? 
0  pudor!    Et  pullos  et  turkey  non  bene  raptos! 
Vina  etiam  subrepta  professoris  alicujus 
(Horresco  referens)  e  cella!    Dedecus!    Est  nil 
Tutum  a  furibus?    En  pullos  nunc  faucibus  illis 
Sorbent !  Nunc  sunt  in  terra,  turn  in  ictu  oculi  non 
Apparebunt  omne  in  SBtemum !    Miseros  pullos, 
Infelices  0  pueros !    Illi  male  capti 
A  pueris,  sed  hi  capientur  mox  male  (0 !   0 ! !) 
A  Plutone  atro! 

Forsan  lap  sis  quinque  diebus,  cum  sapiens  vir 
Omnes  hos  juvenes  ad  cenam  magnificenter 
Invitavit.    Tempore  sane  adsunt.    Bene  laeti 
Judex  accipiunt  et  filia  pulchra  sodales 
Hos  furtivos.     Ad  mensam  veniunt.     Juvenes  cur 
Tam    agitantur?      Quid    portentum    conspiciunt 

nunc? 
Protrudunt  oculi  quasi  ranarum !    Nihil  est  in 
Mensa  prseter  turkeys !    Unus  quoque  catino ! 
Solum  hoC;  praeterea  nil ! 


66  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

tiveness  which  charms  and  transfigures 
the  early  years  of  life.  In  the  Univer- 
sity of  Hesperus  one  found  the  imme- 
diate fruit  of  this  experience  in  the  de- 
sire of  the  student,  expressed  before  he 
was  thoroughly  within  the  college  gates, 
of  obtaining  that  which  would  be  of  im- 
mediate practical  advantage  to  himself. 
He  demanded  what  the  Germans  call 
brodstudien,  and  sometimes  very  little 
beyond  the  knowledge  which  he  could 
convert  into  Minnesota  wheat  or  some 
other  iota  of  the  material  prosperity 
which  surges  from  east  to  west  and 
waxes  on  every  side  of  our  land.  How 
strenuously  one  had  to  fight  this  great 
impulse!  and  against  what  overwhelm- 
ing odds!  It  was  a  reacting  of  King 
Canute's  forbiddance  to  the  sea,  and, 
like  that  famous  defeat,  it  had  its 
humors. 

You  could  see  so  plainly  that  this 
demon  of  practicality  had  been  im- 
planted by  want,  and  privation,  and  a 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         57 

knowledge  drunk  with  the  mother's  milk, 
that  the  struggle  of  life  on  that  untested 
soil  was  a  struggle  to  live ;  you  could  see 
this  so  plainly  that  you  often  felt  eon- 
strained  to  yield  to  its  cry  and  urgency. 

And  the  weapons  at  hand  to  fight  it 
were  so  few!  Materialism  on  every 
hand.  And  it  was  plain,  also,  that  here 
was  but  an  eddy  in  the  wave — that  the 
impulse  toward  brodstudien  was  un- 
doubtedly but  a  groping  forward  in 
the  great  movement  of  the  half-century 
that  has  endowed  realschulen  from  St. 
Petersburg  to  San  Francisco,  and  is  per- 
haps but  the  beginning  of  the  industrial 
conquest  of  the  world — in  its  first  en- 
deavors necessarily  crippled,  over-zeal- 
ous and  impotent  of  best  works. 

Yet  in  the  face  of  every  concession 
there  came  anew  to  your  conscience  the 
conviction,  haunting  unceasingly,  of  the 
need  of  the  idea  in  academic  life,  of  the 
need  of  the  love  of  study  for  its  own 
sake,  of  a  broader  education  of  the  sym- 


68  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

pathies,  of  greater  activity  in  the  in- 
tangible world  of  thought  and  feeling — 
desires  of  sonls  ^^hydroptic  with  a 
sacred  thirst.''  To  these  alone  did  it 
behoove  us  to  concede,  for  through  the 
spirit  alone  could  the  **high  man"  sus- 
tainedly  lift  up  his  heart — 

"  Still  before  living  he'd  learn  how  to  live — 
No  end  to  learning. 
Earn  the  means  first — God  surely  will  contrive 
Use  for  our  earning.  » 

Others  mistrust  and  say,  '  But  time  escapes, — 

Live  now  or  never!' 
He  said,  'What's  Time?    leave  Now  for  dogs 
and  apes, 

Man  has  Forever.' " 

The  ratio  of  Hesperus  students  who 
chose  the  old  form  of  scholastic  train- 
ing, called  through  long  centuries  the 
Humanities,  was  some  little  time  ago  not 
more  than  one-fifth  of  those  in  the  de- 
partment of  literature  and  arts.  Since 
the  number  was  so  small — all  depart- 


THE  UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         59 

ments  would  then  hardly  count  five  hun- 
dred students — the  growth  was  favored 
of  that  most  delightful  feature  of 
small-college  life,  friendship  between 
instructor  and  undergraduate.  Such 
offices  often  grew  to  significant  propor- 
tions during  a  student's  four  collegiate 
years.  All  genialities  aided  them;  and 
nothing  sinister  hindered. 

The  young  folks '  hearts  were  as  warm 
as  may  be  found  upon  any  generous  soil, 
and  they  held  a  sentiment  of  personal 
loyalty  which  one  needed  never  to  ques- 
tion. They  went  to  their  University, 
after  such  longing  and  eagerness,  so 
thoroughly  convinced  that  there  was  to 
be  found  the  open  sesame  to  whatever 
in  their  lives  had  been  most  unattain- 
able, that  their  first  attitude  was  not  the 
critical,  negative,  which  one  notices  in 
some  universities  deemed  more  fortu- 
nate, but  the  positive  and  receptive.  If 
they  did  not  find  that  which  to  their 
minds  seemed  best,  had  they  not  the  in- 


60  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

heritance  of  hope  1 — a  devise  which  Hes- 
perus earth  and  air  entail  upon  all  their 
children,  and  upon  which  all  are  most 
liberally  nurtured. 

Then  the  Hesperus  youth  had  a  defect, 
if  one  may  so  put  it,  that  aided  him 
materially  to  a  friendly  attitude  with 
his  instructors.  He  was,  with  rare  ex- 
ceptions, as  devoid  of  reverence  for  con- 
ventional distinctions  as  a  meadow-lark 
nesting  in  last  year's  tumble-weed  and 
thinking  only  of  soaring  and  singing. 
In  this,  perhaps,  is  the  main-spring  of 
the  reason  why  nearly  every  student, 
either  through  some  inborn  affinity  or  by 
election  of  studies,  drifted  into  genial 
relations  with  some  member  of  the 
faculty. 

The  pleasantest  part  of  my  day's  work 
used  to  be  in  the  retirement  of  the 
Greek  study  and  from  eight  to  nine  in 
the  morning.  Never  a  student  of  mine 
who  did  not  come  at  that  hour  for  some 
occasion  or  need.     One  man  snatched 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         61 

the  opportunity  to  read  at  sight  a  good 
part  of  the  Odyssey.  Another  took  up 
and  discussed  certain  dialogues  of  Plato. 
Another  who  aimed  at  theological  learn- 
ing studied  the  Greek  Testament  and 
the  '  ^  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles. ' ' 
Others  came  in  to  block  out  courses 
of  work.  Still  others  were  preparing 
papers  and  gathering  arguments,  au- 
thorities, and  data  for  debating  societies 
and  clubs. 

In  that  hour,  too,  a  sympathetic  ear 
would  hear  many  a  personal  history  told 
with  entire  frankness  and  naivete.  One 
poor  fellow  had  that  defect  of  will  which 
is  mated  at  times  with  the  humorous 
warmth  which  the  Germans  call  gemiith, 
and  the  added  pain  of  consciousness 
of  his  own  weakness.  Another  clear- 
headed, muscular-handed,  and  ready 
youth  measured  his  chances  of  getting 
wood  to  saw, — ^^just  the  exercise  he 
needed,  out  of  doors,'' — ^horses  to  groom, 
and  the  city  lamps  to  light,  to  earn  the 


62  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

simple  fare  which  he  himself  cooked. 
Many  a  pathetic  story  found  tongue  in 
that  morning  air,  and  times  were  when 
fate  dropped  no  cap  of  recognition  and 
granted  no  final  victory.  In  hearing  the 
details  of  hope  deferred,  of  narrow 
estate  and  expansive  ambition,  you 
longed  for  the  fabled  Croesus  touch 
which  turned  want  to  plenty,  or,  more 
rationally,  you  projected  a  social  order 
where  the  young  and  inapt  should  not 
suffer  for  the  sins  of  others,  but  be 
within  the  sheltering  arms  of  some  sym- 
pathetic power. 

There  was  the  mildness  of  the  chinook 
to  this  social  blizzard,  however,  for 
groups  moved  even  in  the  dewy  hour  of 
half -past  eight  toward  the  open  door  of 
the  Greek  lecture-room,  laughing  at  the 
last  college  joke  or  secret  society  esca- 
pade, and  forecasting  who  would  be  the 
next  penitent  before  the  council.  Also 
certain  youths  and  maids,  between  whom 
lay  the  engagement  announced  by  a  ring 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         63 

on  the  heart-finger — these  one  might  see 
hanging  over  and  fingering — 

"  Vor  Liebe  und  Liebesweh" — 

volumes  lying  upon  my  table,  and  in 
their  eagerness  and  absorption  of  the 
world  in  two,  dog-earing  the  golden 
edges  of  ever-living  Theocritus.  And 
why  not?  Such  entanglements  in  the 
web  of  love  oftenest  differed  in  no  way 
from  the  innocence  and  simplicity  of  the 
pristine  Daphnes  and  Coras.  They  were 
living  again,  the  Sicilian  shepherd  and 
shepherdess,  and  wandering  in  the  eter- 
nally virid  fields  of  youth.  The  skies 
and  trees  and  waters  were  merely  not 
of  Trinacria.  But  Hesperus  heavens 
omitted  no  degree  of  ardor. 

And  had  you  seen  her,  you  would 
never  have  blamed  the  youth  for  loving 
the  college  maid.  She  has  the  charm 
abloom  in  the  girlhood  of  every  land, 
and  most  of  all  in  this  of  ours.  Physi- 
cally she  differs  little  from  her  sister 


64  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

in  Eastern  States.  Her  form  is  as  wil- 
lowy. She  has,  except  in  the  case  of 
foreign-born  parents,  the  same  elon- 
gated head  and  bright-glancing  eye. 
Her  skin  sometimes  lacks  in  fairness 
owing  to  the  desiccating  winds  of  the 
interior;  but  there  is  the  same  fineness 
of  texture. 

Power  of  minute  observation  and  a 
vivacious  self-reliance  are  character- 
istics of  the  girl  of  the  University  of 
Hesperus — and,  indeed,  of  the  girl 
throughout  the  West.  She  sees  every- 
thing within  her  horizon.  Nothing 
escapes  her  eye  or  disturbs  her  animated 
self-poise.  She  has  not  the  Buddhistic 
self-contemplation  the  New  England 
girl  is  apt  to  cultivate ;  nor  is  she  given 
to  talking  about  her  sensations  of  body 
and  moods  of  mind.  I  never  heard  her 
say  she  wanted  to  fall  in  love  in  order 
to  study  her  sensations — as  a  Smith  Col- 
lege alumna  studying  at  Barnard  once 
declared.      She    rarely    pursues    fads. 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF  HESPERUS         65 

Neither  is  she  a  fatalist.  And  she  never 
thinks  of  doubting  her  capacity  of  cor- 
rect conclusions  upon  data  which  she 
gathers  with  her  own  experience  of  eye 
and  ear.  From  early  years  she  has  been 
a  reasoner  by  the  inductive  method,  and 
a  believer  in  the  equality  and  unsimi- 
larity  of  men  and  women.  Undeniably 
her  mental  tone  is  a  result  of  the  greater 
friction  with  the  world  which  the  girl  of 
the  West  experiences  in  her  fuller  free- 
dom. Conventionalism  does  not  com- 
monly overpower  the  individual — social 
lines  are  not  so  closely  defined — in  those 
States  where  people  count  by  decades 
instead  of  by  centuries. 

And  what  is  said  of  this  University 
girl's  observing  faculties  is  in  nowise 
untrue  of  her  brother's.  Nature,  the 
most  Socratic  of  all  instructors  and  the 
pedagogue  of  least  apparent  method, 
seems  actually  to  have  taught  him  more 
than  his  sister,  as,  in  fact,  the  physical 
universe  is  apt  to  teach  its  laws  more 


66  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

clearly  to  the  man  than  to  the  woman, 
even  if  she  hath  a  clearer  vision  of  the 
moral  order.  Perhaps  the  man's  duties 
knit  him  more  closely  to  physical  things. 

With  clear,  far-seeing  eyes — for 
plenty  of  oxygen  has  saved  them  -from 
near-sightedness — a  Hesperns  boy  will 
distinguish  the  species  of  hawk  flying 
yonder  in  the  sky,  forming  his  judgment 
by  the  length  of  wing  and  color-bars 
across  the  tail.  I  have  heard  him  com- 
ment on  the  tarsi  of  falcons  which 
whirled  over  the  roadway  as  he  was 
driving,  and  from  their  appearance  de- 
termine genus  and  species.  He  knows 
the  note  and  flight  of  every  bird.  He 
will  tell  you  what  months  the  scarlet 
tanager  whistles  in  the  woods,  why 
leaves  curl  into  cups  during  droughts, 
and  a  thousand  delicate  facts  which  one 
who  has  never  had  the  liberty  of  the 
bird  and  squirrel  in  nowise  dreams  of. 

And  why  should  he  not?  All  beasts 
of  the  prairie  and  insects  of  the  air  are 


THE   UNIVERSITY  OF   HESPERUS         67 

known  to  him  as  intimately  as  were 
the  rising  and  setting  stars  to  the  old 
seafaring,  star-led  Greeks.  During  his 
summer  the  whip-poor-will  has  whistled 
in  the  shadow  of  the  distant  timber,  and 
the  hoot-owl  has  ghosted  his  sleep.  He 
has  wakened  to  the  carol  of  the  brown 
thrush  and  the  yearning  call  of  the 
mourning  dove,  as  the  dawn  reached 
rosy  fingers  up  the  eastern  sky. 

He  has  risen  to  look  upon  endless 
rows  of  corn  earing  its  milky  kernels, 
and  upon  fields  golden  with  nodding 
wheat-heads.  And  from  the  impene- 
trable centre  of  the  tillage,  when  the 
brown  stubble  has  stood  like  needles  to 
his  bare  feet,  he  has  heard  the  whiz  of 
the  cicada  quivering  in  the  heated' air. 
The  steam-thresher  has  then  come  pant- 
ing and  rumbling  over  the  highway,  and 
in  the  affairs  of  men  the  boy  has  made 
his  first  essay.  He  cuts  the  wires  that 
bind  the  sheaves,  or  feeds  the  hopper,  or 
catches  the  wheat,  or  forks  away  the 


68  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

yellow  straw,  or  ties  the  golden  kernels 
in  sacks,  or  brings  water  to  the  choked 
and  dusty  men.  He  runs  here  and  there 
for  all  industries. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  of  his  associa- 
tion with  such  fundamentals  of  life  that 
this  boy  has  great  grasp  upon  the  physi- 
cal world.  In  his  very  appearance  one 
sees  a  life  untaught  in  the  schools  of 
men.  In  looking  at  him  there  is  nothing 
of  which  you  are  so  often  reminded  as 
of  a  young  cottonwood-tree.  The  tree 
and  the  boy  somehow  seem  to  have  a 
kinship  in  structure,  and  to  have  been 
built  by  the  same  feeling  upward  of 
matter.  And  this  perhaps  he  is — a 
broad-limbed,  white-skinned,  animalized, 
great-souled  poplar,  which  in  ages  long 
past  dreamed  of  red  blood  and  a  beating 
heart  and  power  of  moving  over  that 
fair  earth — after  the  way  that  Heine's 
fir-tree  dreamed  of  the  palm — and  finally 
through  this  yearning  became  the  honest 
boysoul  and  body  which  leaps  from  pure 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         69 

luxuriance  of  vigor,  and  runs  and  rides 
and  breathes  the  vital  air  of  Hesperus 
to-day. 

But  even  with  the  strong-limbed  phy- 
sique which  open-air  life  upbuilds,  the 
Hesperus  students  have  their  full  quota 
of  nervousness.  Elements  in  their  lives 
induce  it.  First  there  is  the  almost  in- 
finite possibility  of  accomplishment  for 
the  ambitious  and  energetic — so  little  is 
done,  so  much  needs  to  be.  Again,  tem- 
perature changes  of  their  climate  are 
most  sudden  and  extreme.  A  third  in- 
centive to  nervous  excitation  is  the  stim- 
ulant of  their  wonderful  atmosphere, 
which  is  so  exhilarating  that  dwellers 
upon  the  Hesperus  plateau  suffer  som- 
nolence under  the  air-pressure  and  equi- 
librium of  the  seaboard. 

Unfortunately  the  students  have  until 
lately  had  nothing  that  could  be  called 
a  gymnasium,  in  which  they  might  coun- 
terpoise nerve-work  with  muscular 
action.    At  one  time  they  endeavored  to 


70  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

equip  a  modest  building.  In  the  Legis- 
lature, however,  the  average  representa- 
tive, the  man  who  voted  supplies,  looked 
back  upon  his  own  boyhood,  and,  recall- 
ing that  he  never  suffered  indigestion 
while  following  the  plough  down  the 
brown  furrow,  set  his  head  against 
granting  one  dollar  of  the  State's  sup- 
plies for  the  deed  fool  athletics ;  in  fact, 
he  lapsed  for  the  moment  into  the  mental 
condition  of,  say,  a  Tory  of  Tom  Jones's 
time  or  a  hater  of  the  oppressed  races 
of  to-day. 

This  one  instance  will  possibly  give  a 
shadow  of  impression  of  the  power  base 
politics — reversions  to  conditions  our 
race  is  evolving  from — have  had  in 
Hesperus  University  life.  The  power 
was  obtained  in  the  beginning  chiefly 
because  of  the  University's  sources  of 
financial  support — appropriations  by 
biennial  Legislatures  in  which  every 
item,  the  salary  of  each  individual  pro- 
fessor, was  scanned,  and  talked  over,  and 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         71 

cut  down  to  the  lowest  bread-and-water 
figure,  first  by  the  committee  in  charge 
of  the  budget  and  afterwards  by  the 
Legislature  in  full  session.  One  in- 
stance alone  illustrates.  In  the  early 
spring  of  1897,  when  the  University  esti- 
mate was  before  the  Legislature  for  dis- 
cussion and  the  dominating  Populists 
were  endeavoring  to  reduce  its  figure,  a 
legislator  sturdily  insisted:  ^ ^They're 
too  stingy  down  there  at  the  University. 
They're  getting  good  salaries,  and  could 
spare  a  sum  to  some  one  who  would 
undertake  to  put  the  appropriations 
through.*'  One  thousand  dollars  was 
said  to  be  ^^ about  the  size  of  the  job.'' 
A  cut  of  twenty  per  cent.,  generally 
speaking,  upon  already  meagre  salaries 
resulted  to  a  faculty  too  blear-eyed 
politically  and  unbusiness-like  to  see  its 
financial  advantage.  After  two  or  three 
years  the  stipends  were  restored  to  their 
former  humility,  the  Legislature  pos- 
sibly having  become  ashamed. 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 
>4I  Jcr\oi)A\l 


72  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

And  in  the  make-up  of  the  senatus 
academicns,  or  board  of  regents,  thereby 
hangs,  or  there  nsed  to  hang,  much  of 
doubt  and  many  a  political  trick  and 
quibble.  It  was  a  variation  of  the  dream 
of  the  Texas  delegate  to  the  nominating 
convention — **The  offices!  That's  what 
we're  here  for.''  For  if  a  Democratic 
governor  were  elected,  he  appointed 
from  his  party  men  to  whom  he  was 
beholden  in  small  favors.  The  members 
of  the  board  were  Democrats,  that  is, 
and  were  expected  to  guard  the  inter- 
ests of  their  party.  Or  if  the  voters  of 
Hesperus  chose  a  Republican  executive, 
he  in  turn  had  his  abettors  whom  he 
wanted  to  dignify  with  an  academic 
course  for  which  there  were  no  entrance 
examinations  beyond  faithfulness  to 
party  lines  and  party  whips.  It  thus 
happened  that  the  fitness  of  the  man  has 
not  always  been  a  prime  consideration 
in  his  appointment.  More  often  because 
he  was  somebody's  henchman,  or  some- 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         73 

body's  friend,  the  executive  delighted  to 
honor  him. 

These  political  features  in  the  board 
of  regents  materially  affected  the  fac- 
ulty. For  instance,  if  there  were  among 
the  professors  one  who  illustrated  his 
lectures  or  class-room  work  by  examples 
of  the  justice  and  reasonableness  of  free 
trade,  he  acted  advisedly  for  his  tenure 
if  he  lapsed  into  silence  when  the  Re- 
publicans were  in  power.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  advocated  protection  in- 
stead of  free  trade,  while  the  Democrats 
held  State  offices — ^which  happened  only 
by  unusual  fate — it  was  prudent  for  the 
professor  to  hold  his  tongue. 

Upon  every  question  of  the  day,  and 
even  in  presenting  conditions  of  life  in 
ancient  days,  as,  for  instance,  in  Greece, 
the  faculty  were  restrained,  or  at  least 
threats  were  rendered.  The  petty  poli- 
tics of  an  agricultural  democracy  acted 
upon  academic  life  in  precisely  the  same 
way  that  autocracy  and  clericalism  in 


74  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Germany  have  affected  its  university 
faculties.  In  Hesperus  professors  have 
been  dismissed  without  any  excuse, 
apparent  reason,  or  apology,  because 
of  a  change  of  administration  at  the 
State  capital  and  a  hungry  party's 
coming  into  power.  In  various  callings, 
or  lines  of  life,  the  individual  may  be, 
nay,  often  is,  wantonly  sacrificed,  but 
surely  one  of  the  saddest  results  of  po- 
litical shystering  is  the  cheapening  of 
the  professor's  chair,  and  rendering  that 
insecure  for  the  permanence  of  which  ac- 
tive life  and  its  plums  have  been  yielded. 
Hinging  immediately  upon  the  politi- 
cal machine  are  the  rights  of  and  recog- 
nition of  women  in  university  govern- 
ment and  pedagogic  work.  The  fact  that 
two  or  three  women  were  the  strenuous 
initiators  of  the  institution  has  been  for- 
gotten, and  no  longer  is  there  faith  that 

"  The  woman's  cause  is  man's ;  they  rise  or  sink 
Together." 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         75 

With  all  its  coeducation,  Hesperus  has 
not  yet  evolved — as  have  New  York, 
Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania,  Illinois, 
and  Wisconsin — to  women  regents  or 
trustees.  The  people  have  not  yet'awak- 
ened  to  the  justice  of  demanding  that, 
in  a  State  institution  open  to  young 
women  as  well  as  to  young  men,  women 
as  well  as  men  shall  be  in  its  government 
and  direction. 

And  within  the  brown  walls  of  the 
institution  a  woman  may  not  carry 
her  learning  to  the  supreme  pedagogic 
end.  *  *  People  ridicule  learned  women,  * ' 
said  clear-eyed  Goethe,  speaking  for 
his  world,  the  confines  of  which  at 
times  extend  to  and  overlap  our  own, 
*^and  dislike  even  women  who  are  well 
informed,  probably  because  it  is  con- 
sidered impolite  to  put  so  many  igno- 
rant men  to  shame. ' '  Such  a  man — an 
ignorant  man,  one  of  the  party  appoint- 
ees just  now  spoken  of — ^when  a  woman 
was   dismissed   from   the    Greek   chair 


76  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

some  years  ago,  declared,  ^^The  place 
of  women  is  naturally  subordinate ;  we 
shall  have  no  more  women  professors.*' 
It  was  a  pitiful  aping  of  dead  and  gone 
academic  prejudices.  To  this  day,  how- 
ever, but  one  act — that  rather  an  en- 
forced one — ^has  gainsaid  his  dictum.  A 
woman  has  been  appointed  to  the  chair 
of  French.  It  remains  to  be  seen 
whether  her  salary  is  the  same  as  that 
of  the  men  doing  work  of  equal  grade 
and  weight  with  her  own. 

"  We  cross  the  prairie  as  of  old 
The  pilgrims  crossed  the  sea, 
To  make  the  West,  as  they  the  East, 
The  homestead  of  the  free" — 

sang  the  men  and  women  of  the  fifties 
as  their  train  pulled  out  of  Eastern  sta- 
tions and  their  steamboats  paddled  up 
the  waters  of  the  Big  Muddy.  But  how 
often  it  happens  that  what  one  genera- 
tion will  die  for,  the  next  will  hold  of 
little  value,  or  even  in  derision ! 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         77 

Not  wholly  independent  of  politics, 
not  without  the  uses  and  abuses  of  poli- 
tics, is  a  great  corporation  which  one 
of  necessity  mentions  because  it  has 
played  no  small  part  in  Hesperus  Uni- 
versity life.  In  those  portions  of  our 
country  where  the  units  of  the  Methodist 
church  are  segregate  few  know  the 
gigantic  secular  power  it  possesses  in 
the  South  and  in  the  "West.  The  per- 
fection of  its  organization  is  like  that 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  where  it 
is  longest  at  home,  or  like  the  unity  of 
the  Latter  Day  Saints  in  their  centre, 
Utah.  The  Methodists  in  Hesperus  far 
outnumber  in  membership  and  money 
any  other  denomination.  They  are  tena- 
cious of  their  power,  as  religious  de- 
nominations have  ever  been,  and  aggres- 
sive in  upbuilding  schools  of  their  own 
voice  and  foundation.  The  question, 
^^What  shall  we  do  to  keep  on  the  good 
side  of  the  Methodists?''  was,  therefore, 
not  infrequently  asked  in  Hesperus  Uni- 


78  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

versity  politics.  The  answer  was  prac- 
tical: ^'Make  us  Methodists.  Bring 
Methodism  to  us  to  stop  the  antagonism 
of  a  powerful  body."  Such  a  solving  of 
the  problem — for  these  reasons — was 
not  high-minded;  it  was  not  moral 
courage.  But  it  was  thought  politic — 
and  it  was  done. 

Some  of  the  best  elements  of  our  day 
have  been  profoundly  at  work  among 
the  Methodists.  Many  of  the  denomina- 
tion have  been  in  the  vanguard  of  the 
march  to  better  things.  But  it  is  fair 
to  the  course  of  Hesperus  University, 
which  has  sometimes  halted,  to  say  that 
sagacious  vigor  and  a  knowledge  of 
the  best —  ^«  Bikr terra  — were  not  in  every 
case  the  claim  to  distinction  of  its 
Methodist  head.  ^^Aus  Nichts,''  says 
Fichte,  ^^wird  nimmer  Etwas."  But 
mediocrity — or  worse — did  not  always 
prevail.  Under  absolutely  pure  and 
true  conditions  a  man  would  be  chosen 
for  his  fitness  to  fill  the  office  of  Chan- 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         79 

cellor,  no  matter  what  his  religious  bias, 
unless,  indeed,  that  bias  marred  his 
scholarship  and  access  to  men,  and  thus 
really  became  an  element  in  his  unfit- 
ness. 

In  a  perspective  of  the  University  of 
Hesperus  it  is  necessary  to  consider 
these  various  controlling  forces  as  well 
as  the  spiritual  light  of  its  students. 
And  yet  to  those  who  have  faith  in  its 
growth  in  righteousness  there  is  an 
ever-present  fear.  The  greatness  of  the 
institution  will  be  in  inverse  proportion 
to  the  reign  of  politics,  materialism,  and 
denominationalism  in  its  councils,  and 
the  fear  is  that  the  people  may  not  think 
straight  and  see  clear  in  regard  to  this 
great  fact.  Upon  spiritual  lines  alone 
can  its  spirit  grow,  and  if  an  institution 
of  the  spirit  is  not  great  in  the  spirit, 
it  is  great  in  nothing. 

Its  vigor  and  vitality  are  of  truth  in 
its  young  men  and  women.  One  boy  or 
one  girl  may  differ  from  another  in 


80  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

glory,  but  each  comes  trailing  clouds  of 
light,  and  of  their  loyalty  and  stout- 
heartedness and  courage  for  taking  life 
in  hand  too  many  pasans  cannot  be 
chanted,  or  too  many  triumphant  ^^ 
raised.  They  have  been  the  reason  for 
the  existence  of  the  institution  now  more 
than  a  generation.  Their  spiritual  con- 
tent is  its  strength,  and  is  to  be  more 
clearly  its  strength  when  guidance  of  its 
affairs  shall  have  come  to  their  hands. 

Their  spiritual  content,  we  say — it 
should  reflect  that  life  of  theirs  when 
heaven  seems  dropping  from  above  to 
their  earth  underfoot — in  addition  to  the 
labors  and  loves  of  men  and  women, 
a  procession  of  joys  from  the  February 
morning  the  cardinal  first  whistles 
*^what  cheer.*' 

While  dog-tooth  violets  swing  their 
bells  in  winds  of  early  March  bluebirds 
are  singing.  The  red-bud  blossoms,  and 
robins  carol  from  its  branches.  Then 
the  mandrake,  long  honored  in  enchant- 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         81 

ment,  opens  its  sour-sweet  petals  of  wax. 
Crimson-capped  woodpeckers  test  tree- 
trunks  and  chisel  their  round  house  with 
skilful  carpentry.  The  meadow-lark 
whistles  in  mating  joy.  Purple  violets 
carpet  the  open  woods.  Trees  chloro- 
phyl  their  leaves  in  the  warm  sun.  The 
wild  crab  bursts  in  sea-shell  pink,  and 
sober  orchards  shake  out  ambrosial  per- 
fume. Soft,  slumberous  airs  puff  clouds 
across  the  sky,  and  daylight  lingers  long 
upon  the  western  horizon.  Summer  is 
come  in. 

The  cuckoo  cries.  The  hermit  thrush 
pipes  from  his  dusky  covert.  Doves, 
whose  aching  cadences  melt  the  human 
heart,  house  under  leaves  of  grapevine 
and  hatch  twin  eggs.  Vast  fields  of 
clover  bloom  in  red  and  white,  and  but- 
terflies and  bees  intoxicate  with  honey 
swarm  and  flit  in  all-day  ravaging. 
Vapors  of  earth  rise  in  soft  whirls  and 
stand  to  sweeten  reddening  wheat  and 
lancet  leaves  of  growing  corn. 

6 


82  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Arcadia  could  hold  nothing  fairer,  and 
the  god  Pan  himself,  less  satyr  and  more 
sonl  than  of  old,  may  be  waiting  to  meet 
you  where  some  fallen  cottonwood 
bridges  a  ravine  and  the  red  squirrel 
hunts  his  buried  shagbarks. 

There  ^  *  life  is  sweet,  brother.  There 's 
day  and  night,  brother,  both  sweet 
things;  sun  and  moon  and  stars, 
brother,  all  sweet  things.  There's  like- 
wise a  wind  on  the  heath. ' ' 

They  have  most  brilliant  suns.  They 
breathe  sparkling,  lambent  ether.  They 
look  daily  upon  elm  and  osage  orange, 
oaks  and  locusts  in  summer  so  weighted 
with  leaves  that  no  light  plays  within 
the  recess  of  branches.  All  the  night 
winds  sough  through  these  dusky  trees, 
while  slender  voices,  countless  as  the 
little  peoples  of  the  earth,  murmur  in 
antiphonal  chorus. 

And  above  are  the  patient  stars  and 
Milky   Way   dropping   vast   fleeces    of 


THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   HESPERUS         83 

light  upon  our  earth  awhirl  in  the  dear 
God's  Arms. 

The  West  is  large.  That  which  would 
be  true  of  a  university  in  one  part  of 
its  broad  expanse  might  not  be  true  of 
another  institution  of  like  foundation 
some  distance  away.  And  what  might 
be  said  of  a  college  or  university  inde- 
pendent of  politics,  would  in  nowise  be 
averable  of  one  pretty  well  controlled 
by  that  perplexing  monitor. 

Again,  a  fact  which  might  be  asserted 
of  a  college  built  up  by  some  religious 
denomination  might  be  radically  false  if 
claimed  for  one  supported  by  the  tax- 
payers of  a  great  commonwealth,  and 
hedged  by  sentiment  and  statute  from 
the  predominance  of  any  ecclesiasticism. 

You  speak  of  the  general  character- 
istics of  the  University  of  Michigan,  but 
these  characteristics  are  not  true  of  the 
little  college  down  in  Missouri,  or  Ken- 
tucky, or  Ohio.    Neither  would  the  facts 


84  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

of  life  in  some  institutions  in  Chicago  be 
at  one  with  those  of  a  thriving  school 
where  conditions  are  markedly  klein- 
stadtisch. 

In  speaking  of  the  West  we  must  real- 
ize its  vast  territory  and  the  varying 
characteristics  of  its  people.  Of  what  is 
here  set  down  I  am  positive  of  its  entire 
truth  only  so  far  as  one  institution  is 
concerned,  namely,  the  titulary — that  is, 
the  University  of  Hesperus — ^which  re- 
calleth  the  city  bespoken  in  the  Gospel 
according  to  Matthew — that  it  is  set 
upon  a  hill  and  cannot  be  hid. 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF 
ST.  LOUIS 


There  was  never  in  any  age  more  money  stir- 
ring, nor  never  more  stir  to  get  money. 

"  The  Great  Frost  of  January,  1608" 

Women  have  seldom  sufficient  serious  employ- 
ment to  silence  their  feelings  :  a  round  of  little 
cares,  or  vain  pursuits,  frittering  away  all 
strength  of  mind  and  organs,  they  become 
naturally  only  objects  of  sense. 

Mary  Wollstonecraft 


You  have  too  much  respect  upon  the  world : 
They  lose  it  that  do  buy  it  with  much  care. 

Shakespeare 


TWO   NEIGHBORS    OF 
ST.  LOUIS 

The  Big  Muddy  built  the  fertile  re- 
gions near  its  course.  Dropping  in 
warm  low  tides  mellow  soil  gathered 
from  upper  lands,  it  pushed  the  flood  of 
the  sea  farther  and  farther  to  the  south. 
Non  palma  sine  pulvere  has  been  the 
song  of  its  waters — ^no  green  will  grow 
here  without  my  mould. 

It  was  at  its  wonder-work  those  mil- 
lions of  suns  ago  when  the  tiny  three- 
toed  horse  browsed  among  the  grasses 
of  what  is  now  Kansas.  Its  great  years 
can  be  measured  only  by  the  dial  of  God. 
All  the  monstrosities  of  the  eld  of  its 
birth  it  has  survived,  and  like  a  know- 
ing, sentient  thing — a  thinking,  feeling 
thing — it  has  been  expanding  and  con- 
tracting, doubling  up  and  straightening 

87 


88  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

out  its  tawny  body,  each  one  of  its  num- 
berless centuries  pushing  its  uncounted 
mouths  farther  toward  the  submerged 
mountains  of  the  Antilles. 

In  its  thaumaturgy  it  formed  vast 
prairies  and  rolling  lands.  Upon  its 
gently-packed  earth  forests  shot  up. 
Subterranean  streams  jetted  limpid 
springs,  which  joined  and  grew  to  rivers 
open  to  the  light  of  day.  Above  the 
heavens  were  broad  and  the  horizon  far 
away — as  far  as  you  outlook  at  sea  when 
sky  and  earth  melt  to  a  gray,  and  you 
stand  wondering  where  the  bar  of  heaven 
begins  and  where  the  restless  waters 
below. 

Indians,  autochthons,  or,  perchance, 
wanderers  from  Iberia,  or  Babylon,  were 
here.  Then  white  men  came  to  the  flat 
brown  lands,  and  that  they  brought  wives 
showed  they  meant  to  stay  and  build  a 
commonwealth.  The  two  raised  hearth- 
stones for  their  family,  and  barns  for 
herds  and  flocks.    They  marked  off  fields 


TWO  NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS         89 

and  knotted  them  with  fruit  trees,  and 
blanketed  them  with  growing  wheat,  and 
embossed  them  in  days  of  ripeness  with 
haystacks  snch  as  the  race  of  giants  long 
since  foregone  might  have  built.  In 
their  rich  cornfields  they  set  up  shocks 
which  leaned  wearily  with  their  weight 
of  golden  kernels,  or  stood  torn  and 
troubled  by  cattle  nosing  for  the  sugary 
pulp.  Such  works  their  heaven  saw  and 
to-day  sees,  their  air  above  entirely 
bright,  beading  and  sparkling  in  its  in- 
verted cup  through  every  moment  of 
sunshine. 

Over  this  land  and  its  constant  people 
icy  northers,  victorious  in  elemental  con- 
flicts far  above  the  Rockies,  rush  swirl- 
ing and  sweeping.  They  snap  tense, 
sapless  branches  and  roll  dried  leaves 
and  other  ghosts  of  dead  summer  before 
their  force.  They  pile  their  snows  in  the 
angles  of  the  rail  fence  and  upon  the 
southern  banks  of  ravines,  and  whistle 
for  warmth  through  the  key-holes  and 


90  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

under  the  shrunken  doors  of  farm- 
houses. 

But  winds  and  snows  disappear,  and 
again  life  leaps  into  pasture-land.  A 
yellow  light  glowing  between  branches 
foreruns  the  green  on  brown  stalk  and 
tree.  The  meadow-lark  lifts  his  buoyant 
note  in  the  air,  and  the  farmer  clears 
his  field  and  manures  his  furrow  with 
sleepy  bonfires  and  the  ashes  of  dead 
stalks.  Earth  springs  to  vital  show  in 
slender  grasses  and  rose-red  verbena, 
and  the  pale  canary  of  the  bastard 
indigo. 

In  this  great  folkland  of  the  Big 
Muddy,  which  is  beyond  praise  in  the 
ordinary  phrase  of  men,  there  live  along- 
side many  other  types,  a  peculiar  man 
and  woman.  They  are — to  repeat,  for 
clearness '  sake — only  two  of  many  types 
there  indwelling,  for  it  is  true  of  these 
parts  as  was  said  of  England  in  1755: 
**You  see  more  people  in  the  roads  than 
in  all  Europe,  and  more  uneasy  coun- 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS  91 

tenances  than  are  to  be  found  in  the 
world  besides.'^ 

The  man  is  seen  in  all  our  longitudes ; 
the  woman  is  rarely  in  any  other  milieu. 
She  is  a  product  of  her  city  and  town. 
The  women  of  the  country  have  ever 
before  them  queryings  of  the  facts  of 
life,  the  great  lessons  and  slow  processes 
of  nature,  the  depth  and  feeling  of 
country  dwelling.  But  this  city-woman 
suffers  from  shallowness  and  warp 
through  her  unknowledge  of  nature  and 
the  unsympathy  with  fellow  humans 
that  protection  in  bourgeois  comfort 
engenders.  She  is  inexperienced  in  the 
instructive  adventure  of  the  rich  and 
the  instructive  suffering  of  the  poor. 
The  basis  of  her  life  is  conventional. 

The  dollar  to  her  eyes  is  apt  to  meas- 
ure every  value.  Let  us  not  forget  that 
in  the  history  of  the  world  this  is  no  new 
estimate.  It  was  the  ancient  Sabine 
poet  who  advised  ^^  make  money — ^hon- 
estly if  we  can,  if  not,  dishonestly — only, 


92  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

make  money.''  ^^This  is  the  money-got 
mechanic  age,"  cried  Ben  Jonson  in 
Elizabeth's  day.  And  the  poet  of  the 
'^  Elegy  written  in  a  Country  Chnrch- 
Yard"  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago  wrote  to  his  friend  Wharton: 
**It  is  a  foolish  Thing  that  one  can't 
only  not  live  as  one  pleases,  but  where 
and  with  whom  one  pleases,  without 
Money.  .  .  .  Money  is  Liberty,  and  I 
fear  money  is  Friendship  too  and 
Society,  and  almost  every  external 
Blessing. ' ' 

Lacking  simplicity  this  woman  is  sub- 
merged in  artificiality  and  false  concep- 
tions of  life  values.  Her  hair,  often 
blondined  and  curled  in  fluffy  ringlets, 
is  filleted  with  gold-mounted  combs 
above  a  countenance  fine-featured  and 
a  trifle  hardened.  Her  well-formed 
hands,  even  in  daily  comings  and  goings, 
are  flashing  with  rings.  She  loves  to 
turn  the  precious  stones  and  watch  them 
divide  the  light.    These  jewels  are  her 


TWO   NEIGHBORS  OF  ST.  LOUIS  93 

first  expression  of  accumulating  wealth 
— these  and  the  pelts  of  animals  difficult 
to  capture,  and  therefore  costly.  After 
obtaining  these  insignia  of  opulence  she 
begins  to  long  for  a  third — the  gen- 
tle, inept  riot  and  solitary  Phorcides's 
eye  for  seeing  life  which  she  calls  ^*  so- 
ciety. ' ' 

The  voice  is  an  unconscious  index  of 
one's  spiritual  tone;  hers  is  metallic. 
At  times  it  is  deep,  with  a  masculine 
note  and  force.  The  gift  of  flexible  Eng- 
lish speech,  belonging  to  her  by  the  right 
of  inheritance  of  every  American — she 
is  at  times  of  the  old  American  stock, 
but  more  often  of  foreign-born  parents, 
— she  is  apt  to  wrap  in  stereotyped 
phrases  or  newspaper  slang.  In  her 
bustling  life,  formed,  stamped,  and  en- 
dowed in  spirit  by  an  iron-grooved,  com- 
mercial world,  she  gives  little  consid- 
eration to  use  of  the  greatest  of  all 
instruments  and  the  mightiest  of  all 
arts.    She  has  not  the  instinct  of  atten- 


94  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

tion  to  her  mother  tongue  which  marks 
women  of  fine  breeding. 

The  best  thing  made  by  man — good 
books — she  has  little  love  for.  The 
newspaper  and  to-day's  flimsy  novel  of 
adventure  stand  in  their  stead.  There 
were  times  when  her  reading  had  the 
illuminating  calm  of  Milton's  ^^Pense- 
roso"  and  the  buoyant  freshness  of 
Shakespeare's  comedies.  But  that  was 
when  the  rosy  morning  of  her  life  stood 
on  the  mountain-top  of  school-girl  ideal- 
ism and  looked  not  at  things  near  by, 
but  afar — a  period  not  long  when  com- 
pared to  the  jaded  vacuity  of  later 
years. 

To  this  shapely  woman  a  writer  is 
presented  as  ^Hhe  highest  paid  lady- 
writer  in  the  world. ' '  The  highest  paid ! 
Where,  then,  is  literature,  0  Milton, 
with  thy  ten  pounds  for  '^Paradise 
Lost,"  and  eight  more  from  Printer 
Simmons  to  thy  widow!  Where,  0  im- 
mortal   writer    of    the    simplicities    of 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS  95 

Wakefield,  apprenticed  in  thy  poverty  to 
Publisher  Newberry!  Where,  then, 
singer  and  ganger  Robert  Burns  I 
^  ^  Learning, ' '  says  Thomas  Fuller,  in  his 
*^Holy  States,''  ^^ learning  hath  gained 
most  by  those  books  by  which  the 
printers  have  lost." 

This  woman  is  fair  and  seemly. 
When  you  look  upon  her  you  think  how 
full  of  strength  and  well-knit  is  her  body. 
You  foresee  her  the  mother  of  strong 
and  supple  children.  She  is  graceful  as 
she  moves — a  result  of  her  freedom  and 
a  sign  of  her  strength — and  she  is  mis- 
tress of  the  occasion  always.  In  this 
domination  (the  right  of  the  domina) 
she  has,  even  when  unmarried  and  as 
early  as  in  her  teens,  the  poise  and  solid- 
ity of  the  matron.  She  scorns  your  sup- 
position that  she  is  not  informed  in 
every  worldly  line,  and  that  the  waver- 
ing hesitancy  of  the  one  who  does  not 
know  could  be  hers.  She  rarely  blushes, 
and  is  therefore  a  negative  witness  to 
Swift's  hard-cut  apophthegm — 


96  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

"A  virtue  but  at  second-hand; 
They  blush  because  they  understand." 


Althougli  conventional,  she  is  often 
uninstructed  in  petty  distinctions  and 
laws  which  of  late  more  and  more  grow- 
ingly  have  manacled  the  hands,  fettered 
the  feet,  and  dwarfed  the  folk  of  our 
democracy;  and  which  threaten  that 
plasticity  which,  it  is  claimed,  is  the 
great  characteristic  of  life.  *  *  It  is  quite 
possible,'*  says  Clifford  in  his  *' Con- 
ditions of  Mental  Development,''  ^'for 
conventional  rules  of  action  and  con- 
ventional habits  of  thought  to  get  such 
power  that  progress  is  impossible.  .  .  . 
In  the  face  of  such  danger  it  is  not  right 
to  he  proper.^ ^ 

Secretly  our  St.  Louis  neighbor,  like 
most  women,  subjects  herself  to 


"  the  chill  dread  sneer 
Conventional,  the  abject  fear 
Of  form-transgressing  freedom." 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS  97 

Openly  she  often  passes  it  by  and  re- 
marks, rocking  her  chair  a  trifle  uneas- 
ily, that  she  is  as  good  as  anybody  else. 
For  some  unspoken  reason  you  never 
ask  her  if  every  one  else  is  as  good  as 
she.  You  recall  what  de  Tocqueville 
wrote  eighty  years  ago:  ^^If  I  were 
asked  to  what  the  singular  prosperity 
and  growing  strength  of  that  [Ameri- 
can] people  ought  mainly  to  be  attrib- 
uted, I  should  reply — to  the  superiority 
of  their  women.'' 

Of  all  so-called  civilized  women,  she 
makes  the  greatest  variation  in  her 
treatment  of  those  of  her  own  and  those 
of  the  other  sex.  Toward  women  she  is 
apt  to  be  dull,  splenetic,  outspoken 
about  what  she  esteems  the  faults  of 
others.  Even  the  weaknesses  of  her 
husband  she  analyzes  to  their  friends 
— herein  is  a  fertile  source  of  divorce. 
Toward  women,  you  observe,  she  is  apt 
to  be  metallic,  rattling,  and  uncharitable, 
or    possibly    over-social,    relieving    the 

7 


98  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

peccant  humors  of  her  mind  and  atti- 
tudinizing upon  what  she  esteems  a 
man's  estimate  of  women — to  please  the 
sex  she  is  not  of.  To  men  she  is  pert, 
flippant,  witty,  caustic,  rapid,  graceful, 
and  gay.  At  times  she  amuses  them  and 
herself  by  slurring  upon  other  women. 
She  seems  to  leave  it  to  the  man  to  estab- 
lish the  spirit  upon  which  the  two  shall 
meet;  and  by  deft  hand  and  turn  and 
movement  she  is  constantly  suggesting 
her  eternal  variation  from  him.  The 
woman  is  always  chaste.  It  follows  that 
marriages  are  many. 

A  not  uncommon  fruit  of  marriage 
vows  is  an  application  for  divorce, 
which  she  estimates  with  such  levity 
and  mental  smack  that  you  would 
hesitate  to  bring  a  young  girl  to  her 
presence. 

'^Has  she  applied,  do  you  knowT' 

*^0h!   they've  separated." 

* '  On  what  grounds  is  she  going  to  get 
itr' 


TWO  NEIGHBORS  OF  ST.  LOUIS  99 

*^If  she  isn't  careful  she'll  lose  her 
case  by  seeing  him  too  often. ' ' 

These  are  a  few  of  many  such  sen- 
tences heard  from  her  lips  in  public 
places. 

Nothing  higher  than  what  an  ordinary 
civil  contract  seeks  seems  to  be  sought 
in  her  marital  affairs.  She  undoes  the 
decree  of  old  Pope  Innocent  III.,  to 
whom  is  ascribed  the  ordination  of  mar- 
riage as  a  function  of  his  church  and 
the  claim  of  its  sanctified  indissolubility. 
In  the  light  of  her  actioit  marriage  is 
truly  and  purely  a  civil  contract,  and 
devoid  of  that  grace,  resignation,  for- 
bearance, patience,  tenderness,  sweet- 
ness, and  calm  which  make  it  truly 
religious. 

She  is  strong,  she  is  hopeful,  she  is 
ardent.  She  knows  herself  and  her 
power — that  it  is  of  the  flesh  which  aims 
at  prettiness.  The  divine  beauty  of 
spirit  in  the  countenance  she  does  not 
know.    In  her  midst  Fra  Angelico  would 


100  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

find  few  sitters.  Her  religion,  com- 
monly that  which  in  other  ages  passed 
from  a  propulsive,  burning  spirit  to 
frozen  formalism,  is  the  crystallized 
precept  of  theologue  and  priest,  the 
fundamental  ecstasy  and  informing  soul 
having  long  since  departed.  If  she  had 
a  real  religion  she  could  not  be  what 
she  is. 

Those  questions  of  our  day  that  shove 
their  gaunt  visages  into  sympathetic 
minds  she  has  little  knowledge  of,  and 
little  of  thaf  curiosity  which  leads  to 
knowledge.  The  fashion  of  her  gown 
and  the  weekly  relays  at  the  theatre  are 
nearer  to  her  heart,  and  to  her  thinking 
touch  her  more  personally,  than  the 
moral  miasmata  and  physical  typhoids 
of  her  neighboring  Poverty  Flat.  Both 
pests  the  adjustment  of  her  household 
relations  brings  within  her  door.  For 
her  dwelling  is  commonly  domesticked 
by  dusky  shapes  upon  whom  also  the  real 
things  of  life  sit  lightly,  to  whom  per- 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        IQl 

manence  and  serious  thought  and  work 
are  rare.  Their  engagement  is  by  the 
week,  like  that  of  pitiful  vaudeville  asso- 
ciates, and  their  performance  as  sur- 
passingly shallow.  They  come  upon 
their  stage  of  work,  veneer  their  little 
task  with  clever  sleight  of  hand,  and  roll 
off  to  the  supine  inertness  and  inanity 
of  their  cabin. 

This  woman  has  therefore  in  her 
hands  no  feeling  of  the  real  relation  and 
friendship  that  grow  between  mistress 
and  maid  who  live  the  joys  and  sorrows 
of  years  together.  By  the  less  fortunate 
themselves,  as  well  as  by  her  own 
shallow  skimming,  her  sympathies  with 
the  less  fortunate  are  dwarfed.  She 
looks  upon  her  domestic  as  a  serving 
sub-human  animal,  infinitely  below  her- 
self, tolerated  because  of  its  menial  per- 
formance, and  barely  possessed  of  the 
soul  which  her  ecclesiastical  tradition 
says  is  in  every  human  form.  In  this 
deflection  of  her  moral  sense,  can  the 


102  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

hand  of  secular  justice  be  punishing 
the  wrong-doing  of  past  centuries — the 
bringing  in  putrid  slave-ships  the  cap- 
tured, dazed,  Eden-minded,  animal-man 
— ^^the  blameless  Ethiopian'' — to  our 
shores  1 

She  is  born  of  fine  material.  When 
her  nature  is  awry  it  is  because  of  lack 
of  right  incentive.  Old  measures  and 
life  estimates  are  absurd  to  her  quick 
senses,  and  none  of  the  best  of  our  mod- 
ern values  are  put  in  their  place.  Her 
creed  is  wholly  at  variance  with  the  facts 
of  life  to-day.  If  substantial  instruction 
had  entered  the  formative  period  of  her 
life,  there  would  have  been  no  substance 
to  project  the  darker  parts  of  her 
shadow.  Her  nature  is  now  ill-formed 
because  of  the  misdirection  of  its  ele- 
mental forces.  She  knows  the  tenor  of 
her  empire,  and  in  truth  and  secretly 
she  wonders  how  long  her  reign  will 
endure. 

**And  therefore,''  says  Aristotle,  in 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        103 

his  Politics,  **  women  and  children  must 
be  trained  by  education  with  an  eye  to 
the  state,  if  the  virtues  of  either  of  them 
are  supposed  to  make  any  difference  in 
the  virtue  of  the  state.  And  they  must 
make  a  difference,  for  children  grow  up 
to  be  citizens,  and  half  the  persons  in  a 
state  are  women. ' ' 

Abiding  beside  this  overdressed 
woman  is  an  underdressed  man.  His 
first  striking  quality  is  a  certain  sweet- 
natured  patience — a  result  of  his  opti- 
mistic dwelling  in  the  future.  Not 
content  with  the  present,  and  having  for- 
gotten the  values  of  present-day  simple 
life,  he  lives  in  a  future  of  fictitious 
money  values.  *  ^  All  human  power, ' '  he 
thinks,  with  Balzac,  ^4s  a  compound  of 
time  and  patience.  Powerful  beings  will 
and  wait. ' '  He  knows  his  power  and  he 
waits. 

^^It's  going  to  be  worth  a  good 
deal.'^ 


104  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

**Iii  a  few  years,  that'll  be  a  good 
thing.'' 

'^Fifteen  years  from  now  it'll  sell  for 
ten  times  its  present  value. ' ' 

People  have  called  him  deficient  in 
imagination.  Not  since  the  old  Greeks 
have  there  been  such  ideal  seekers  upon 
this  golden  nugget  of  our  solar  system 
which  we  call  the  earth;  nor  since  the 
old  Hellenes  has  there  been  such  an 
idealistic  people  as  that  of  which  he  is  a 
part.  In  Elizabeth's  time,  indeed,  there 
was  imaginative  vigor  similar  to  his. 
Then  as  now  they  were  holding  the  earth 
in  their  hands  and  standing  on  the  stars 
to  view  it  as  it  whirled. 

Instead  of  turning  his  fertile  thought 
toward  art  or  literature,  he  bends  it  first 
of  all  to  material  things.  Schemes  for 
developing  land,  for  dredging  rivers,  for 
turning  forests  into  lumber  or  railway 
ties,  for  putting  up  sky-scrapers  facing 
four  avenues ;  schemes  for  building  and 
controlling     transcontinental     railways 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS        105 

and  interoceanic  fleets;  schemes  for 
raising  wheat  by  the  million  bushels  and 
fattening  cattle  by  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands ;  schemes  for  compressing  air,  gas, 
cotton,  beef;  for  domestic  and  foreign 
mining;  for  irrigation;  for  oil  borings 
— ^he  brings  his  dynamic  energy  and  re- 
sourcefulness to  the  evolution  of  all 
things  but  the  human  who  is  to  be  yoked 
to  work  out  his  plan. 

In  theory  he  is  democratic  and 
humane — for  the  future,  after  his  inter- 
ests in  dividends  shall  have  ceased.  But 
his  reckless  exploiting  of  human  life 
for  the  present,  now  growing  more  and 
more  common  by  means  of  impersonal 
agents,  is  distinctly  at  war  with  our 
foundation,  democratic  ideas  which  hold 
one  man's  life  as  good  as  another's  and 
which  made  his  existence  possible. 

An  essentially  material  basis  of  life 
turns  his  natural  idealism  into  practical 
values  and  activities.  He  is  an  ideal 
practician,  or  rather  a  practical  idealist. 


106  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

His  unnatural  attitude  toward  to-day 
— that  is,  his  futurity — and  his  incon- 
siderateness  for  to-day's  sunshine,  put 
him  in  a  false  position,  which  bears  the 
fruit  of  self-consciousness.  Nature  is 
not  self-conscious.  The  primal  man  was 
not  self-conscious.  Self-consciousness 
implies  pain;  it  means  that  a  fellow- 
being  is  not  at  one  with  his  surround- 
ings; that  extraneous,  false,  or  hostile 
things  are  pushing  him  from  his  native 
status.  If  his  pain,  whether  physical  or 
spiritual,  is  eased,  morbidness  disap- 
pears. 

In  this  man's  self-conscious  habit  he 
jumps  at  once  to  the  conclusion  that  if 
you  do  not  like  his  town  you  do  not 
like  him.  Your  taste  is  a  personal 
affront.  There  is  no  logical  connection, 
but  he  has  a  certain  ^^ defect  of  heat" 
which  Dean  Swift  avers  lies  in  men  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  type.  The  cordiality 
and  open-handedness  with  which  he  first 
met  you  wanes.    That  he  has  one  of  the 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        107 

best  of  hearts,  and  one  of  the  strongest 
of  heads,  you  are  sure.  He  inwardly  has 
the  same  faith.  He  knows  it  as  Achilles 
knew  his  own  strength,  and  the  knowl- 
edge gives  him  sometimes  the  leonine 
front  which  the  son  of  silver-footed 
Thetis  boasted.  But  your  not  recog- 
nizing the  superiority  of  his  physical 
and  spiritual  environment  over  all  the 
world  causes  an  irritation  deeper  than 
the  epidermis — to  the  nerve-centres,  in 
fact. 

*^What  do  you  think!''  he  laughed, 
shaking  burlily  and  plunging  hands  in 
pockets.  *^What  do  you  think!  The 
other  day  in  Washington  I  met  an  Eng- 
lishman, and  when  I  told  him  the  United 
States  was  the  best  country  in  the  world, 
and  the  State  I  lived  in  the  best  State  in 
the  best  country,  and  the  town  I  lived  in 
the  best  town  in  the  best  State,  and  the 
block  my  office  was  in  the  best  block  in 
the  best  town,  and  my  office  the  best  office 
in  the  best  block " 


108  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

^^And  you  the  best  man  in  the  best 
office,''  I  interjected,  to  which  he  laughed 
a  hearty  affirmative. 

''What  do  you  think  he  said!  Why, 
'  Comf ohtaable,  awh!  comf ohtaable ! '  I 
told  him  it  was  comfortable, — damned 
comfortable. ' ' 

This  very  Englishman,  with  that  con- 
descension of  manner  which  at  times  we 
see  foreigners  assume,  declared  such 
mental  individualization  to  be  purely 
American.  Vanity,  audacity,  and  self- 
appreciation  exist  among  all  peoples, 
and  even  from  the  banks  of  the  Isis  we 
hear  how  the  late  Dr.  Jowett  averred, 
**I  am  the  Master  of  Baliol  College; 
Baliol  is  the  first  college  in  Oxford; 
Oxford  is  the  first  city  in  England; 
England  is  the  first  country  in  the 
world. ' ' 

United  with  the  feeling  of  personal 
worth  and  independence  in  this  citizen 
by  the  Big  Muddy  is,  paradoxically, 
another  characteristic — ^namely,  a  great 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        109 

tolerance.  He  could  hardly  expect  tol- 
erance himself  if  he  did  not  extend  it 
to  another  who  may  have  opinions  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  his  own,  is  prob- 
ably his  attitude  of  mind.  He  is  in  his 
way  a  sort  of  embodiment  of  the  spirit 
of  our  national  constitution. 

But  this  largess  of  broad  tolerance 
leaves  him  lacking  a  gift  of  the  discrimi- 
nating or  critical  judgment.  The  sense 
or  feeling  of  quality — that  which  meas- 
ures accurately  spiritual  and  artistic 
values — ^his  very  breadth  and  practical 
largeness,  his  democracy,  allow  no 
growth  to.  A  sensitive  discrimination, 
the  power  of  differentiation,  is  no  natu- 
ral endowment,  but  a  result  of  training, 
mental  elimination,  comparison,  asso- 
ciation, and  a  dwelling  in  inherent  spir- 
itual values. 

Through  his  worth  and  capacity  in 
other  directions  he  would  have  this 
quality  if  he  ^^had  time''  and  seclusion 
for  thought.    But  his  life  makes  it  pos- 


110  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

sible  for  an  explosive  and  heated  talker, 
a  mouther  of  platitudinous  phrase,  to 
stand  cheek  by  jowl  in  his  esteem  with 
a  seer  of  elevation  and  limpid  thought- 
fulness.  His  estimate  of  even  lighter 
publicities  is  tinctured  by  this  defect — 
the  theatrical,  for  instance,  where  a 
verdant  girl,  lavishing  upon  her  ambi- 
tion for  the  stage  the  money  she  inher- 
ited from  a  father's  patent  syrup  or 
pills,  and  an  actress  of  genius  and  expe- 
rience fall  in  his  mind  in  the  same  cate- 
gory because  a  theatrical  syndicate  has 
equally  advertised  each. 

What  the  result  to  politics  of  this  in- 
discriminating  and  non-sagacious  judg- 
ment, this  lack  of  feeling  for  finer  lines 
in  character — ^mark,  peculiar  nature,  as 
Plato  means  when  he  uses  the  word  in 
the  Phsedrus — would  be  hard  to  estimate. 

Although  for  the  most  part  a  private 
citizen  absorbed  in  his  own  affairs,  the 
holder  of  an  office  has  to  him  a  peculiar 
glamour.     He  is   apt  to   fall  into   the 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS        HI 

thinking  lines  of  writers  of  nameless  edi- 
torials, who,  forgetful  of  their  own 
hidden  effulgence,  fillip  at  quiet  folk 
as  ^^ parochial  celebrities"  and  ^^ small 
deer.''  And  yet  he  knows  that  he  lives 
in  an  age  of  reclame,  and  that  by  the  ex- 
penditure of  a  few  dollars  in  direct  or 
indirect  advertisement  a  name  may  be 
set  before  more  people  than  our  fore- 
fathers numbered  on  the  first  Indepen- 
dence Day. 

In  his  midst  is  a  certain  publicity  of 
spirit,  and  in  his  estimation  work  under- 
taken in  the  sight  of  men  is  of  a  higher 
order  than  that  done  in  the  privacy  of 
one's  closet.  The  active  life  is  every- 
thing; the  contemplative,  nothing. 
Talking  is  better  than  writing — it  so 
easily  gives  opportunity  for  the  aggres- 
sive personality.  For  a  young  woman 
looking  to  support  herself  he  advo- 
cated type-writing  in  a  public  office 
in  preference  to  the  retirement  of  nur- 
sery governess.     When  the  girl  drew 


112  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

back  with  the  dread  of  publicity  which 
results  from  the  retired  life  of  women, 
he  exclaimed,  ^  ^  It 's  all  a  question  of 
whether  youVe  got  the  courage  to  take 
the  higher  thing.'' 

If  he  is  a  fruit  of  self-cultivation,  he 
enjoys  talking  of  the  viridity  of  his 
growth  as  well  as  these  now  purpler 
days.  During  early  struggles  he  may 
have  undergone  suffering  and  privation. 
In  that  event,  if  his  nature  is  narrow 
and  hard,  he  has  become  narrower  and 
harder,  and  his  presence,  like  Quilp's, 
shrivels  and  deadens  every  accretion 
save  his  interest.  But  when  he  is  of  the 
better  sort  of  soil,  adversity  discovers 
the  true  metal,  and  misfortune  gives  him 
a  sympathy,  depth,  and  tenderness  that 
charm  you  to  all  defects.  You  would 
migrate  to  his  neighborhood  to  live  in 
the  light  of  his  genial  warmth.  You 
think  of  the  beautiful  encomium  Mene- 
laus  pronounced  upon  Patroclus — **He 
knew  how  to  be  kind  to  all  men. ' ' 


TWO  NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS       113 

Beyond  all,  he  is  open-eyed  and  open- 
eared.  And  above  all  he  is  affirmative; 
never  negative.  His  intuition  tells  him 
it  is  affirmation  that  builds,  and  that 
Bacon  says  right — ^4t  is  the  peculiar 
trait  of  the  human  intellect  to  be  more 
moved  and  excited  by  affirmatives  than 
by  negatives. ' ' 

**Why  do  people  buy  and  read  such 
fool  stuff  as  ^Treasure  Island'?  I  can't 
see.'* 

*  ^  They  read  it  for  its  story  of  adven- 
ture, and  for  its  rare  way  of  telling  the 
story,''  I  ventured,  in  answer.  ^'They 
read  it  for  its  style." 

^^ Style!  Gemini!  Style!  I  should 
smile!  I  can  write  a  better  book  than 
that  myself!" 

*  ^  Then  it  might  pay  you  as  a  business 
venture  to  set  yourself  about  it. ' ' 

'  ^  It 's  by  a  man  named  Stevenson,  and 

he's  written  other  stories.    Are  they  all 

as  bad?" 

Strange  he  should  make  such  a  criti- 
8 


114  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

cism  of  Louis  Stevenson,  in  literature 
pronouncedly  the  successful  man.  For 
success  in  the  abstract,  and  successful 
men  and  women  in  the  concrete — the 
word  success  is  here  used  in  its  vulgar, 
popular  sense,  in  reference  to  material 
advancement,  not  to  ethical  or  spiritual 
development — ^he  worships.  Success  is 
a  chief  god  in  his  pantheon, — to  have 
returns  greater  than  one's  effort  or 
worth  deserve.  Yet  he  believes  with  the 
author  of  Lorna  Doone,  ^Hhe  excess  of 
price  over  value  is  the  true  test  of  suc- 
cess in  life. ' '  None  of  us  would  think  of 
saying  Shakespeare  was  a  success;  or 
Milton;  or  John  Brown;  or  Martin 
Luther.  But  Pope,  with  his  clever 
money-making,  we  might  call  a  success, 
as  did  Swift  in  1728:  ^^God  bless  you, 
whose  great  genius  has  not  so  trans- 
ported you  as  to  leave  you  to  the  con- 
stancy of  mankind,  for  wealth  is  liberty, 
and  liberty  is  a  blessing  fittest  for  a 
philosopher.'' 


TWO   NEIGHBORS  OF  ST.  LOUIS       115 

The  means  to  end,  the  processes  by 
which  the  successful  issue  of  a  matter  is 
gained,  our  neighbor  of  St.  Louis  tells 
you  with  a  smile  not  to  be  finikin  about. 
Many  who  have  had  success  have  not 
been.  Look  at  all  history,  from  Abra- 
ham to  Joe  Smith  and  Cecil  Ehodes  and 
many  of  our  millionaires.  He  himself  is 
not,  he  declares,  but  his  acts  often  con- 
tradict his  assertion.  So  long  as  a  man, 
or  a  woman,  **gets  there,''  it  does  not 
matter  much  how.  ^^Work  through  a 
corporation  or  trust,"  he  tells  you,  and 
smiling  at  you  with  honest  eyes,  adds, 
^^A  corporation  can  do  things  the  indi- 
vidual man  would  not.*'  The  one  who 
succeeds  is  the  model;  he  is  to  be 
envied;  he  is  the  ideal  the  ancients 
sought — the  happy  man.  Pass  by 
noblesse  oblige,  human  heartedness,  ele- 
vation that  would  not  stoop  to  exploit 
human  labor,  human  need,  and  human 
sacrifice — that  is,  as  corporations  pass 
these  qualities  by. 


116  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

In  short,  let  us,  in  fact,  and  not  by 
legend  alone,  have  the  character  for- 
merly ascribed  by  average  English  folk 
to  the  Yankee. 

Assumption  of  excellence,  he  knows, 
goes  far  toward  persuading  people  that 
you  have  it.  There  is  not  so  great  dif- 
ference in  people  after  all,  this  demo- 
crat believes.  When  one  has  every  mate- 
rial privilege  that  will  allow  him  to 
assume,  that  will  hedge  and  fence  his 
assumption  about,  he  is  pretty  apt  to 
succeed,  he  thinks,  and  be  cried  up  as  a 
man  of  extraordinary  virtue,  of  taste,  of 
attainment.  In  any  success,  commonly 
so-called,  he  asks  little  of  the  great 
marks  by  which  a  man  should  be  judged. 
*^He  has  done  this.''  ^^He  has  got 
that."  **He  is  clever,''  he  says.  He 
rarely  cries,  *^He  is  honest."  ^^He  is 
true. ' ' 

Marriage  he  is  not  so  apt  as  the  brill- 
iant woman  beside  him  to  consider  im- 
permanent.    This  is  wholly  a  result  of 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS       117 

convention,  for  women,  by  their  very 
nature  and  the  conditions  of  married 
life,  cling  more  closely  to  the  perma- 
nence of  the  union. 

In  marital  relations  he  has  more  lib- 
erty. When  she  asks  him  if  she  may,  or 
in  her  phrase  ^  *  can, '  Mo  so  and  so,  and 
in  rehearsing  the  matter  says  he  ''let 
her,''  he  accepts  her  homage  and  the 
servile  status  she  voluntarily  assumes. 
You  exclaim  that  men  for  many  cen- 
turies have  been  apt  to  do  this.  En- 
tirely, if  offered  him  by  such  an 
enchantress. 

"  If  she  be  small,  slight-natured,  miserable, 
How  shall  men  grow?" 

Toward  women,  with  all  his  subtlety,  he 
is  possessed  of  a  certain  naivete,  which 
renders  him  a  most  agreeable  compan- 
ion, and  much  at  the  mercy  of  such  asso- 
ciates. 

On  an  express  leaving  St.  Louis  at 
nine  of  the  morning  and  headed  toward 


118  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

the  East,  two  of  these  men  were  one  day 
riding.  A  stretch  of  level  land,  en- 
crusted in  snow  and  flooded  with  sun- 
shine glowing  warm  and  yellow  three 
weeks  after  the  winter  solstice,  length- 
ened the  way.  By  three  in  the  afternoon 
the  sight  of  the  passengers  was  strained 
from  the  pulsation  of  the  train,  and 
reading  gave  place  to  lassitude. 

**Say,"  yawned  one  of  the  men,  ^*do 
you  think  marriage  is  a  failure?'' 

^^ Failure!  failure!"  answered  the 
other.  *^The  biggest  kind  of  a  success! 
Failure!  Holy  smoke!  Why  I've  just 
married  my  third  wife.  Failure!  It 
beats  electric  lights  all  hollow. ' ' 

^^I  don'  know,"  answered  the  ques- 
tioner, dyspeptically.  ^^I  don'  know.  I 
go  home  every  week  or  ten  days.  My 
wife  isn't  glad  to  see  me.  I'm  going 
home  now.  She  won't  be  glad.  They 
think  more  of  you  when  you're  not  home 
so  much." 

**Whee-u-u-u,"  whistled  number  two. 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        119 

With  a  holiday  on  his  hands  no  man 
is  more  awkward.  The  secret  of  giving 
himself  to  enjoyment  he  does  not  know. 
His  relaxation  takes  crudest  form. 
Holiday  enjoyment  means  in  many  cases 
sowing  money  in  barbaric  fashion,  in 
every  thinkable  triviality  that  entails 
expense.  That  which  he  has  bent  every 
nerve  toward  getting,  for  which  he  has 
grown  prematurely  careworn,  the  pos- 
session of  which  vulgar  philosophy 
counts  the  summa  summar^um  of  life,  t^ 
this  he  must  scatter  broadcast,  not  in 
the  real  things  of  art  and  literature 
and  bettering  the  condition  of  the  less 
fortunate,  but  in  sordid  pleasure  and 
vacuous  rushing  hither  and  yon.  It  is 
his  way  of  showing  superiority  to  the 
cub  who  has  not  the  money-making 
faculty,  or  who  holds  different  ideas 
of  the  value  of  living.  Upon  such 
merrymaking  he  has  been  known  to 
indulge  in  Homeric  laughter  over  his 
own  excess,  and  in  tones  heralds  used 


120  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

in  the  days  of  Agamemnon.  Physically  he 
breathes  deeper  and  is  broader  chested 
than  many  men ;  he  has  more  voice,  and 
he  puts  it  out  the  top  of  the  throat. 

To  watch  the  purple  dog-tooth  violet 
push  up  through  dead  leaves  in  March; 
to  listen  in  his  fragrant,  sunlit  spring 
to  the  song  of  the  thrush  or  the  delect- 
able yearning  of  the  mourning-dove ;  to 
know  the  quivering  windflowers  that 
freshen  soil  under  oak  and  hickory — all 
this  is  to  him  as  the  yellow  primrose  to 
Peter  Bell.  There  is  no  pleasure  with- 
out an  end — that  end  being  money. 

The  blooded  mare  in  his  stable  needs 
exercise  and  he  likes  not  another  to  drive 
her  lest  she  lose  response  to  his  voice 
and  hand.  But  it  is  really  a  bore  to 
drive;  what  interest  is  there  in  sitting 
in  a  wagon  and  going  round  and  round? 
He  must  be  doing  something.  He  for- 
gets the  retaliation  nature  takes  upon 
grooves  in  human  life  and  that  discoun- 
tenancing of  innocent  pleasures  is  the 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF  ST.  LOUIS        121 

first  step  toward  dementia  paralytica 
and  the  end  of  interest  in  his  fair  and 
buoyant  world.  He  will  probably  die 
suddenly  in  middle  age,  for  he  is  too 
extreme  in  expenditure  of  himself,  and 
too  small  an  eater  of  the  honey  of  life. 
Honey-eaters  have  terrene  permanence. 

This  man  and  woman  are  not  dispro- 
portionate neighbors.  What  will  be 
their  record  to  the  reading  of  Prince 
Posterity? 

The  lands  that  border  the  Big  Muddy 
have  more  of  the  old  American  spirit 
than  the  extreme  East.  The  proportions 
of  the  old  American  blood  are  there 
greater  than  upon  the  sea-coast,  where 
Europeans  of  a  tradition  far  different 
from  the  ideals  and  enthusiasms  of  our 
early  comers  have  dropped  and  settled, 
and  in  such  numbers  that  they  can  and 
do  knit  their  old  mental  and  social  habits 
into  a  garment  which  is  impervious  to 
true  American  influences. 


122  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

Our  old  American  teachings ! — for  in- 
stance, the  estimate  of  the  greatness  of 
work,  the  dignity  of  labor  of  any  sort 
whatever — that,  it  was  once  claimed, 
was  a  great  reason  our  republic  existed 
to  demonstrate  to  the  world  the  dignity 
of  work,  of  bodily  exertion  directed  to 
some  economic  purpose,  to  produce  use, 
adapt  material  things  to  living.  **That 
citizen  who  lives  without  labor,  verily 
how  evil  a  man!'' — 'Apyd^  ttoXitt)^  xeTvos,  w^ 
zaxo9  Y  dvrjpy  aud  such  scntimcnts  as  this 
of  Euripides  dominated  our  democracy. 

But  in  our  eastern  sea-coast  cities, 
what  with  the  development  of  an  idle, 
moneyed  class,  and  the  settling  down  of 
millions  of  immigrants,  the  European 
conception  of  work's  inherent  ignoble- 
ness  has  grown  to  strong  hold. 

*^Work  is  not  a  disgrace,  but  lack  of 
work  is  a  disgrace,"  ""Epyov  S'  oudkv  6ustdo^, 
dep/iT]  di  T  Sv£i8o<^.  And  Hesiod's  words 
hold  to  the  present  day  among  genuine 
Americans. 


TWO   NEIGHBORS   OF   ST.  LOUIS        123 

Possibly  with  the  great  Middle  West 
and  its  infinite  ^  ^  go, ' '  optimism,  and  con- 
structive breadth,  and  with  such  men 
and  women  as  these  types  by  the  Big 
Muddy,  the  preservation  of  American- 
ism really  lies — but  it  must  be  with  their 
greater  spiritualization  and  greater 
moral  elevation  for  the  future. 


THE    NEW  ENGLAND 
WOMAN 


In  order  to  give  her  praises  a  lustre  and  beauty 
peculiar  and  appropriate,  I  should  have  to  run 
into  the  history  of  her  life — a  task  requiring  both 
more  leisure  and  a  richer  vein.  Thus  much  I  have 
said  in  few  words,  according  to  my  ability.  But 
the  truth  is  that  the  only  true  commender  of  this 
lady  is  time,  which,  so  long  a  course  as  it  has  run, 
has  produced  nothing  in  this  sex  like  her. 

Bacon,  of  Queen  Elizabeth 

Die  Ehelosigkeit  eines  Theils  des  weiblichen  Ge- 
schlechts  ist  in  dem  monogamischen  Gesellschafts- 
zustande  eine  nicht  zu  beseitigende  statistische 
Nothwendigkeit. 

GUSTAVE  SchONBERQ 


THE    NEW   ENGLAND 
WOMAN 

Thkoughout  our  fair  country  there 
has  long  been  familiar,  in  actual  life  and 
in  tradition,  a  corporate  woman  known 
as  the  New  England  woman. 

When  this  woman  landed  upon  Ameri- 
can shores,  some  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago,  she  was  doubtless  a  hearty, 
even-minded,  rosy-cheeked,  full-fleshed 
English  lass.  Once  here,  however,  in  her 
physical  and  mental  make-up,  under  pio- 
neer conditions  and  influenced  by  our 
electric  climate,  a  differentiation  began, 
an  unconscious  individualizing  of  her- 
self :  this  was  far,  far  back  in  the  time  of 
the  Pilgrim  Mothers. 

In  this  adaptation  she  developed  cer- 
tain characteristics  which  are  weakly 
human,  intensely  feminine,  and  again 
passing  the  fables  of  saints  in  heroism 

127 


128  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

and  self-devotion.  Just  what  these 
qualities  were,  and  why  they  grew,  is 
worth  considering  before — in  the  bustle 
of  the  twentieth  century  and  its  elements 
entirely  foreign  to  her  primitive  and 
elevated  spirit — she  has  passed  from 
view  and  is  quite  forgotten. 

In  the  cities  of  to-day  she  is  an  exotic. 
In  the  small  towns  she  is  hardly  indige- 
nous. Of  her  many  homes,  from  the 
close-knit  forests  of  Maine  to  the  hot 
sands  of  Monterey,  that  community  of 
villages  which  was  formerly  New  Eng- 
land is  her  habitat.  She  has  always  been 
most  at  home  in  the  narrow  village  of 
her  forebears,  where  the  church  and 
school  were  in  simpler  days,  and  still  at 
times  are — even  to  our  generation  meas- 
uring only  with  Pactolian  sands  in 
its  hour-glasses — the  powers  oftenest 
quoted  and  most  revered.  From  these 
sources  the  larger  part  of  herself,  the 
part  that  does  not  live  by  bread  alone, 
has  been  nourished. 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  129 

It  was  in  the  quiet  seclusion  of  the 
white  homes  of  these  villages  that  in 
past  generations  she  gained  her  ideals 
of  life.  Such  a  home  imposed  what  to 
women  of  the  world  at  large  might  be 
inanity.  But,  with  a  self-limitation 
almost  Greek,  she  saw  within  those  clap- 
board walls  things  dearest  to  a  woman's 
soul, — a  pure  and  sober  family  life,  a 
husband's  protective  spirit,  the  birth 
and  growth  of  children,  neighborly  ser- 
vice— ^keenly  dear  to  her — for  all  whose 
lives  should  come  within  touch  of  her 
active  hands,  and  an  old  age  guarded  by 
the  devotion  of  those  to  whom  she  had 
given  her  activities. 

To  this  should  be  added  another  gift 
of  the  gods  which  this  woman  ever  bore 
in  mind  with  calmness — a  secluded 
ground,  shaded  by  hemlocks  or  willows, 
where  should  stand  the  headstone  mark- 
ing her  dust,  over  which  violets  should 
blossom  to  freshening  winds,  and  robin 
call  to  mate  in  the  resurrection  time  of 
9 


130  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

spring,  and  in  the  dim  corners  of  which 
ghostly  Indian  pipes  should  rise  from 
velvet  mould  to  meet  the  summer's 
fervency. 

Under  such  conditions  and  in  such 
homes  she  had  her  growth.  The  tasks 
that  engaged  her  hands  were  many,  for 
at  all  times  she  was  indefatigable  in 
what  Plato  calls  women's  work,  rdhdw. 
She  rose  while  it  was  yet  night;  she 
looked  well  to  the  ways  of  her  house- 
hold, and  eat  not  the  bread  of  idleness. 
In  housekeeping — which  in  her  conserv- 
ative neighborhood  and  among  her  pri- 
mary values  meant,  almost  up  to  this 
hour,  not  directing  nor  helping  hired 
people  in  heaviest  labors,  but  rather  all 
that  the  phrase  implied  in  pioneer  days 
— her  energies  were  spent — ^herself 
cooking;  herself  spinning  the  thread 
and  weaving,  cutting  out  and  sewing  all 
family  garments  and  household  linen; 
herself  preserving  flesh,  fish,  and  fruits. 
To  this  she  added  the  making  of  yeast, 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  131 

candles,  and  soap  for  her  household, 
their  butter  and  cheese — ^perhaps  also 
these  foods  for  market  sale — at  times 
their  cider,  and  even  elderberry  wine  for 
their  company,  of  as  fine  a  color  and  dis- 
tinguished a  flavor  as  the  gooseberry 
which  the  wife  of  immortal  Dr.  Primrose 
offered  her  guests.  Abigail  Adams  her- 
self testifies  that  she  made  her  own  soap, 
in  her  early  days  at  Braintree,  and 
chopped  the  wood  with  which  she  kindled 
her  fires.  In  such  accomplishments  she 
was  one  of  a  great  sisterhood,  thousands 
of  whom  served  before  and  thousands 
after  her.  These  women  rarely  told 
such  activities  in  their  letters,  and 
rarely,  too,  I  think,  to  their  diaries ;  for 
their  fingers  fitted  a  quill  but  awkwardly 
after  a  day  with  distaff  or  butter-mould- 
ing. 

These  duties  were  of  the  external 
world,  mainly  mechanical  and  routine, 
and  they  would  have  permitted  her — an 
untiring  materialist  in  all  things  work- 


132  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

able  by  hands — to  go  many  ways  in  the 
wanderings  of  thought,  if  grace,  flex- 
ibility, and  warmth  had  consorted  with 
the  Puritan  idea  of  beauty.  She  had 
come  to  be  an  idealist  in  all  things 
having  to  do  with  the  spirit.  Neverthe- 
less, as  things  stood,  she  had  but  one 
mental  path. 

The  powers  about  her  were  theocratic. 
They  held  in  their  hands  her  life  and 
death  in  all  physical  things,  and  her  life 
and  death  per  omnia  saecula  saeculorum. 
They  held  the  right  to  whisper  approval 
or  to  publish  condemnation.  Her  eager, 
active  spirit  was  fed  by  sermons  and  ex- 
hortations to  self-examination.  Nothing 
else  was  offered.  On  Sundays  and  at 
the  prayer-meetings  of  mid-week  she 
was  warned  by  these  teachers,  to  whom 
everybody  yielded,  to  whom  in  her  child- 
hood she  had  been  taught  to  drop  a  way- 
side courtesy,  that  she  should  ever  be 
examining  head  and  heart  to  escape 
everlasting  hell-fire,  and  that  she  should 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  133 

endure  so  as  to  conduct  her  devoted  life 
as  to  appease  the  anger  of  a  God  as  vin- 
dictive as  the  very  ecclesiasts  them- 
selves. No  escape  or  reaction  was  pos- 
sible. 

The  effect  of  all  this  upon  a  spirit  so 
active,  pliant,  and  sensitive  is  evident. 
The  sole  way  open  to  her  was  the  road 
to  introspection — that  narrow  lane 
hedged  with  the  trees  of  contemplative 
life  to  all  suffering  human  kind. 

Even  those  of  the  community  whose 
life  duties  took  them  out  in  their  world, 
and  who  were  consequently  more  object- 
ive than  women,  even  the  men,  under 
such  conditions,  grew  self -examining  to 
the  degree  of  a  proverb,  ^^The  bother 
with  the  Yankee  is  that  he  rubs  badly 
at  the  juncture  of  the  soul  and  body." 

In  such  a  life  as  this  first  arose  the 
subjective  characteristics  of  the  New 
England  woman  at  which  so  many  gibes 
have  been  written,  so  many  flings 
spoken;    at  which  so  many  burly  sides 


134  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

have  shaken  with  laughter  aaf^earo^. 
Like  ahnost  every  dwarfed  or  distorted 
thing  in  the  active  practical  world, 
^^New  England  subjectivity"  is  a  result 
of  the  shortsightedness  of  men,  the  as- 
sumption of  authority  of  the  strong 
over  the  weak,  and  the  wrongs  they  have 
to  advance  self  done  one  another. 

Nowadays,  in  our  more  objective  life, 
this  accent  of  the  ego  is  pronounced  irri- 
tating. But  God's  sequence  is  apt  to  be 
irritating. 

The  New  England  woman's  subjectiv- 
ity is  a  result  of  what  has  been — the 
enslaving  by  environment,  the  control  by 
circumstance,  of  a  thing  flexible,  pliant, 
ductile — in  this  case  a  hypersensitive 
soul — and  its  endeavor  to  shape  itself  to 
lines  and  forms  men  in  authority  dic- 
tated. 

Cut  off  from  the  larger  world,  this 
woman  was  forced  into  the  smaller.  Her 
mind  must  have  field  and  exercise  for 
its  natural  activity  and  constructiveness. 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  135 

Its  native  expression  was  in  the  great 
objective  world  of  action  and  thought 
about  action,  the  macrocosm;  stunted 
and  deprived  of  its  birthright,  it  turned 
about  and  fed  upon  its  subjective  self, 
the  microcosm. 

Scattered  far  and  wide  over  the  gran- 
itic soil  of  New  England  there  have  been 
the  women  unmarried.  Through  the 
seafaring  life  of  the  men,  through  the 
adventures  of  the  pioneer  enchanting 
the  hot-blooded  and  daring;  through 
the  coaxing  away  of  sturdy  youthful 
muscle  by  the  call  of  the  limitless  fat 
lands  to  the  west;  through  the  siren 
voice  of  the  cities ;  and  also  through  the 
loss  of  men  in  war — that  untellable 
misery — these  less  fortunate  women — 
the  unmarried — ^have  in  all  New  Eng- 
land life  been  many.  All  the  rounding 
and  relaxing  grace  and  charm  which  lie 
between  maid  and  man  they  knew  only 
in  brooding  fancy.  Love  might  spring, 
but  its  growth  was  rudimentary.    Their 


136  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

life  was  not  fulfilled.  There  were  many 
such  spinners. 

These  women,  pertinacious  at  their 
tasks,  dreamed  dreams  of  what  could 
never  come  to  be.  Lacking  real  things, 
they  talked  much  of  moods  and  sensa- 
tions. Naturally  they  would  have 
moods.  Human  nature  will  have  its  con- 
fidant, and  naturally  they  talked  to  one 
another  more  freely  than  to  their  mar- 
ried sisters.  Introspection  plus  intro- 
spection again.  A  life  vacuous  in  ex- 
ternal events  and  interrupted  by  no 
masculine  practicality — ^where  fluttering 
nerves  were  never  counterpoised  by 
steady  muscle — afforded  every  develop- 
ment to  subjective  morbidity. 

And  expression  of  their  religious  life 
granted  no  outlet  to  these  natures — no 
goodly  work  direct  upon  humankind. 
The  Eeformation,  whatever  magnifi- 
cence it  accomplished  for  the  freedom 
of  the  intellect,  denied  liberty  and  indi- 
vidual  choice   to   women.      Puritanism 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND  WOMAN  137 

was  the  child  of  the  Eef  ormation.  Like 
all  religions  reacting  from  the  degrada- 
tions and  abuses  of  the  Middle  Ages,  for 
women  it  discountenanced  community 
life.  Not  for  active  ends,  nor  of  a  cer- 
tainty for  contemplative,  were  women 
to  hive  together  and  live  independent 
lives. 

In  her  simple  home,  and  by  making 
the  best  of  spare  moments,  the  undi- 
rected impulse  of  the  spinster  produced 
penwipers  for  the  heathen  and  slippers 
for  the  dominie.  But  there  was,  through 
all  the  long  years  of  her  life,  no  dig- 
nified, constructive,  human  expression 
for  the  childless  and  husbandless 
woman.  Because  of  this  lack  a  dynamo 
force  for  good  was  wasted  for  centuries, 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  lives  were 
blighted. 

In  New  England  her  theology  ruled, 
as  we  have  said,  with  an  iron  and  tyran- 
nous hand.  It  published  the  axiom,  and 
soon  put  it  in  men's  mouths,  that  the 


138  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

only  outlet  for  women  ^s  activities  was 
marriage.  No  matter  if  truth  to  the 
loftiest  ideals  kept  her  single,  a  woman 
unmarried,  from  a  Garden  of  Eden  point 
of  view  and  the  pronunciamento  of  the 
average  citizen,  was  not  fulfilling  the 
sole  and  only  end  for  which  he  dogma- 
tized women  were  made — she  was  not 
child-bearing. 

In  this  great  spinster  class,  dominated 
by  such  a  voice,  we  may  physiologically 
expect  to  find  an  excess  of  the  neurotic 
altruistic  type,  women  sickened  and  ex- 
tremists, because  their  nature  was  unex- 
pressed, unbalanced,  and  astray.  They 
found  a  positive  joy  in  self -negation  and 
self-sacrifice,  and  evidenced  in  the  per- 
turbations and  struggles  of  family  life 
a  patience,  a  dumb  endurance,  which  the 
humanity  about  them,  and  even  that  of 
our  later  day,  could  not  comprehend, 
and  commonly  translated  into  apathy  or 
unsensitiveness.  The  legendary  fervor 
and    devotion   of    the    saints    of   other 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  139 

days  pale  before  their  self-denying  dis- 
cipline. 

But  instead  of  gaining,  as  in  the 
mediaeval  faith,  the  applause  of  con- 
temporaries, and,  as  in  those  earlier 
days,  inciting  veneration  and  enthusi- 
asm as  a  ^^holy  person,"  the  modern 
sister  lived  in  her  small  world  very  gen- 
erally an  upper  servant  in  a  married 
brother's  or  sister's  family.  Ibsen's 
Pillar  of  Society,  Karsten  Bernick,  in 
speaking  of  the  self-effacing  Martha, 
voices  in  our  time  the  then  prevailing 
sentiment,  '^You  don't  suppose  I  let  her 
want  for  anything.  Oh,  no;  I  think  I 
may  say  I  am  a  good  brother.  Of 
course,  she  lives  with  us  and  eats  at  our 
table ;  her  salary  is  quite  enough  for  her 
dress,  and — what  can  a  single  woman 
want  more?  .  .  .  You  know,  in  a  large 
house  like  ours,  it  is  always  well  to  have 
some  steady-going  person  like  her  whom 
one  can  put  to  anything  that  may  turn 
up." 


140  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

Not  such  estimates  alone,  but  this 
woman  heard  reference  to  herself  in 
many  phrases  turning  upon  her  chas- 
tity. Her  very  classification  in  the  cur- 
rent vernacular  was  based  upon  her  con- 
dition of  sex.  And  at  last  she  witnessed 
for  her  class  an  economic  designation, 
the  essence  of  vulgarity  and  the  con- 
summation of  insolence — ^  ^  superfluous 
women ;'^  that  is,  ^* unnecessary  from 
being  in  excess  of  what  is  needed,'' 
women  who  had  not  taken  husbands,  or 
had  lived  apart  from  men.  The  phrase 
recalls  the  use  of  the  word  *  ^female" — 
meaning,  ^'for  thy  more  sweet  under- 
standing,'' a  woman — which  grew  in 
use  with  the  Squire  Westerns  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  persisted  even 
in  decent  mouths  until  Charles  Lamb 
wrapped  it  in  the  cloth  of  gold  of  his 
essay  on  Modern  Gallantry,  and  buried 
it  forever  from  polite  usage. 

In  another  respect,  also,  this  New 
England  spinster  grew  into  a  being  such 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  141 

as  the  world  had  not  seen.  It  is  difficult 
of  explanation.  Perhaps  most  easily 
said,  it  is  this :  she  never  by  any  motion 
or  phrase  suggested  to  a  man  her  varia- 
tion from  him.  All  over  the  world 
women  do  this;  unconsciously  nearly 
always;  in  New  England  never.  The 
expression  of  the  woman  has  there  been 
condemned  as  immodest,  unwomanly, 
and  with  fierce  invective ;  the  expression 
of  the  man  been  lauded.  Das  Ewig- 
Weibliche  must  persist  without  confes- 
sion of  its  existence.  In  the  common 
conception,  when  among  masculine  com- 
rades she  should  bear  herself  as  a  sex- 
less sort  of  half-being,  an  hermaphro- 
ditic comrade,  a  weaker,  unsexed 
creature,  not  markedly  masculine,  like 
her  brother  or  the  present  golfing 
woman,  and  far  from  positively  femi- 
nine. 

All  her  ideals  were  masculine;  that 
is,  all  concrete  and  human  expression  of 
an  ideal  life  set  before  her  was  mascu- 


142  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

line.  Her  religion  was  wholly  masculine, 
and  God  was  always  ^ '  He. ' '  Her  art  in 
its  later  phases  was  at  its  height  in  the 
^^ Spectator''  and  ^'Tatler/'  where  the 
smirking  belles  who  matched  the  be- 
wigged  beaux  of  Anne's  London  are 
jeered  at,  and  conviction  is  carried  the 
woman  reader  that  all  her  sex  expres- 
sions are  if  not  foul,  fool,  and  sometimes 
both  fool  and  foul. 

In  this  non-recognition  of  a  woman's 
sex,  its  needs  and  expression  in  home 
and  family  life,  and  in  the  domination  of 
masculine  ideals,  has  been  a  loss  of 
grace,  facile  touch  in  manner,  vivacity, 
legerete;  in  short,  a  want  of  clarity, 
delicacy,  and  feminine  strength.  To  put 
the  woman's  sex  aside  and  suppress  it 
was  to  emphasize  spinster  life — and  in- 
crease it.  It  is  this  nullification  of  her 
sex  traits  that  has  led  the  world  to  say 
the  New  England  woman  is  masculine, 
when  the  truth  is  she  is  most  femininely 
feminine  in  everything  but  sex — where 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  143 

she  is  most  femininely  and  self- 
effacingly  it. 

It  is  in  this  narrowness,  this  pnrity, 
simplicity,  and  sanctity,  in  this  circum- 
spection and  misdirection,  that  we  have 
the  origin  of  the  New  England  woman's 
subjectivity,  her  unconscious  self -con- 
sciousness, and  that  seeming  hermaph- 
roditic attitude  that  has  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  world,  caused  its  won- 
der, and  led  to  its  false  judgment  of  her 
merit. 

Social  changes — a  result  of  the  Zeit- 
geist— within  the  last  two  generations 
have  brought  a  broadening  of  the  con- 
ception of  the  ^^ sphere''  of  women. 
Puritan  instincts  have  been  dying.  Ra- 
tionalism has  to  a  degree  been  taking 
their  place.  While,  on  the  other  hand, — 
one  may  say  this  quite  apart  from  con- 
struing the  galvanic  twitchings  of  a  re- 
vived mediaevalism  in  ecclesiastic  and 
other  social  affairs  as  real  life — there 
have  also  come  conceptions  of  the  lib- 


144  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

erty  and  dignity  of  womanhood,  inde- 
pendent or  self-dependent,  beyond  those 
which  prevailed  in  the  nunnery  world. 

A  popular  feeling  has  been  growing 
that  a  woman's  sphere  is  whatever  she 
can  do  excellently.  What  effect  this 
will  have  on  social  relations  at  large  we 
cannot  foresee.  From  such  conditions 
another  chivalry  may  spring!  What 
irony  of  history  if  on  New  England 
soil!!  Possibly,  the  custom  that  now 
pertains  of  paying  women  less  than  men 
for  the  same  work,  the  habit  in  all  busi- 
nesses of  giving  women  the  drudging 
details, — necessary  work,  indeed,  but 
that  to  which  no  reputation  is  affixed, — 
and  giving  to  men  the  broader  tasks  in 
which  there  is  contact  with  the  world 
and  the  result  of  contact,  growth,  may 
ultimately  react,  just  as  out  of  injustice 
and  brutalities  centuries  ago  arose  a 
chivalrous  ideal  and  a  knightly  re- 
dresser. 

The  sparseness  of  wealth,  the  meagre- 


OF  TH€ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

THE  N^   ENGLAND   WOMAN  145 

ness  of  material  ideals,  and  the  frugal- 
ity, simplicity,  and  rusticity  of  New 
England  life  have  never  allowed  a  de- 
velopment of  popular  manners.  Grace 
among  the  people  has  been  interpreted 
theologically;  never  socially.  Their 
geniality,  like  their  sunshine,  has  always 
had  a  trace  of  the  northeast  wind — 
chilled  by  the  Labrador  current  of  their 
theology.  Native  wit  has  been  put  out 
by  narrow  duties.  The  conscience  of 
their  theology  has  been  instinctively  for 
segregation,  never  for  social  amalgama- 
tion. They  are  more  solitary  than  gre- 
garious. 

We  should  expect,  then,  an  abrupt- 
ness of  manner  among  those  left  to  de- 
velop social  genius — the  women — even 
among  those  travelled  and  most  gener- 
ously educated.  "We  should  expect  a 
degree  of  baldness  and  uncoveredness 
in  their  social  processes,  which  possibly 
might  be  expressed  by  the  polysyllable 
which  her  instructor  wrote  at  the  end 

10 


146  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

of  a  Harvard  Annex  girl's  theme  to  ex- 
press its  literary  quality,  ** unbuttoned" 
— unconsciously. 

When  you  meet  the  New  England 
woman,  you  see  her  placing  you  in  her 
social  scale.  That  in  tailor-making  you 
God  may  have  used  a  yardstick  differ- 
ent from  the  New  England  measure  has 
not  yet  reached  her  consciousness;  nor 
that  the  system  of  weights  and  measures 
of  what  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  calls  ^Hhe 
half-baked  civilization  of  New  England '* 
may  not  prevail  in  all  towns  and  coun- 
tries. Should  you  chance  not  to  fit  any 
notch  she  has  cut  in  her  scale,  she  is  apt 
to  tell  you  this  in  a  raucous,  strident 
voice,  with  a  schoolma'am  air  in  deliv- 
ery of  her  opinion.  If  she  is  untravelled 
and  purely  of  New  England  surround- 
ings, these  qualities  may  be  accented. 
She  is  undeniably  frank  and  unquestion- 
ably truthful.  At  all  times,  in  centuries 
past  and  to-day,  she  would  scorn  such 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  147 

lies  as  many  women  amazingly  tell  for 
amusement  or  petty  self-defence. 

It  is  evident  that  she  is  a  good  deal  of 
a  fatalist.  This  digression  will  illus- 
trate :  If  you  protest  your  belief  that  so 
far  as  this  world's  estimate  goes  some 
great  abilities  have  no  fair  expression, 
that  in  our  streets  we  jostle  mute  inglo- 
rious Miltons;  if  you  say  you  have 
known  most  profound  and  learned 
natures  housed  on  a  Kansas  farm  or  in 
a  New  Mexico  canon;  nay,  if  you  aver 
your  faith  that  here  in  New  England 
men  and  women  of  genius  are  unnoticed 
because  Messrs.  Hue  and  Cry,  voicing 
the  windier,  have  not  appreciated  larger 
capacities,  she  will  pityingly  tell  you 
that  this  larger  talent  is  supposititious. 
If  it  were  real,  she  continues,  it  must 
have  risen  to  sight  and  attracted  the 
eye  of  men.  Her  human  knowledge  is 
not  usually  deep  nor  her  insight  subtle, 
and  she  does  not  know  that  in  saying 
this  she  is  contradicting  the  law  of  lit- 


148  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

erary  history,  that  the  producers  of  per- 
manent intellectual  wares  are  often  not 
recognized  by  their  contemporaries,  nor 
run  after  by  mammonish  publishers. 
And  at  last,  when  you  answer  that  the 
commonest  question  with  our  human- 
kind is  nourishment  for  the  body,  that 
ease  and  freedom  from  exhausting 
labor  must  forerun  education,  literature, 
art,  she  retorts  that  here  is  proof  she  is 
right:  if  these  unrecognized  worthies 
you  instance  had  the  gifts  you  name, 
they  would  be  superior  to  mere  physical 
wants. 

If  you  have  longanimity,  you  do  not 
drive  the  generality  closer;  you  drown 
your  reflections  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne : 
*^The  iniquity  of  oblivion  blindly  scat- 
tereth  her  poppy  and  deals  with  the 
memory  of  men  without  distinction  to 
merit  of  perpetuity.  .  .  .  Who  knows 
whether  the  best  of  men  be  known,  or 
whether  there  be  not  more  remarkable 
persons    forgot    than    any    that    stand 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  149 

remembered  in  the  known  account  of 
timer' 

Her  narrow  fatalism,  united  with  the 
conservatism  and  aristocratic  instincts 
common  to  all  women  from  their  retired 
life  and  ignorance  of  their  kind,  gives 
the  New  England  woman  a  hedged  sym- 
pathy with  the  proletarian  struggle  for 
freer  existence.  It  may  be  lack  of  com- 
prehension rather  than  lack  of  sympa- 
thy. She  would  cure  by  palliations,  a 
leprosy  by  healing  divers  sores.  At 
times  you  find  her  extolling  the  changes 
wrought  in  the  condition  of  women  dur- 
ing the  last  seventy  years.  She  argues 
for  the  extension  of  education ;  her  con- 
servatism admits  that.  She  may  not 
draw  the  line  of  her  radicalism  even 
before  enfranchisement.  But  the  vaster 
field  of  the  education  of  the  human  race 
by  easier  social  conditions,  by  lifting 
out  of  money  worship  and  egoism, — this 
has  never  been,  she  argues,  and  there- 
fore strenuously  insists  it  never  will  be. 


160  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Her  civic  spirit  is  Bostonesque.  A 
town's  spirit  is  a  moral  and  spiritual 
attitude  impressed  upon  members  of  a 
community  where  events  have  engen- 
dered unity  of  sentiment,  and  it  com- 
monly subordinates  individual  idiosyn- 
crasies. 

The  spirit  Boston  presents  includes  a 
habit  of  mind  apparently  ratiocinative, 
but  once  safely  housed  in  its  ism  in- 
credulously conservative  and  persist- 
ently self-righteous — lacking  flexibility. 
Within  its  limits  it  is  as  fixed  as  the 
outline  of  the  Common.  It  has  exter- 
nally a  concession  and  docility.  It  is 
polite  and  kind — but  when  its  selfish- 
ness is  pressing  its  greediness  is  of  the 
usurious  lender.  In  our  generation  it 
is  marked  by  lack  of  imagination,  origi- 
nality, initiative.  Having  had  its  origin 
in  Non-conformity,  it  has  the  habit  of 
seeing  what  it  is  right  for  others  to  do 
to  keep  their  house  cliean — pulling  down 
its  mouth  when  the  rest  of  the  world 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  151 

laughs,  square-toeing  when  the  rest  trip 
lightly,  straight-lacing  when  the  other 
human  is  erring,  but  all  the  time  carry- 
ing a  heart  under  its  east-wind  stays, 
and  eyes  which  have  had  a  phenome- 
nal vision  for  right  and  wrong  doing — 
for  others'  wrongdoing  especially;  yet 
withal  holding  under  its  sour  gravity 
moral  impulses  of  such  import  that  they 
have  leavened  the  life  of  our  country 
to-day  and  rebuked  and  held  in  check 
easier,  lighter,  less  profound,  less  illu- 
minated, less  star-striking  ideals. 

It  is  a  spirit  featured  not  unsimilarly 
to  the  Lenox  landscape — safe,  serene, 
inviting,  unable  in  our  day  to  produce 
great  crop  without  the  introduction  of 
fresh  material — and  from  like  cause.  A 
great  glacier  has  pressed  on  both  human 
spirit  and  patch  of  earth.  But  the 
sturdy,  English  bedrock  of  the  immate- 
rial foundation  was  not  by  the  glacier 
of  Puritanism  so  smoothed,  triturated, 
and  fertilized  as  was  Berkshire  soil  by 


152  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

the  pulverizing  weight  of  its  titanic  ice 
flow. 

This  spirit  is  also  idealistic  outside  its 
civic  impulses, — referring  constantly  to 
the  remote  past  or  future, — and  in  its 
eyes  the  abstract  is  apt  to  be  as  real  as 
the  concrete.  To  this  characteristic  is 
due  not  only  Emersonism  and  Alcottism 
— really  old  Platonism  interpreted  for 
the  transcendental  Yankee — but  also 
that  faith  lately  revivified,  infinitely  vul- 
garized, as  logically  distorted  as  the 
pneuma  doctrine  of  the  first  century, 
and  called  ^^ Christian  Science.''  The 
idealism  of  Emerson  foreran  the  dollar- 
gathering  idealism  of  Mrs.  Mary  Baker 
Eddy  as  the  lark  of  spring  foreruns  the 
maple  worm. 

This  idealism  oftenest  takes  religious 
phases — as  in  its  Puritan  origin — and  in 
many  instances  in  our  day  is  content 
with  crude  expression.  Of  foregone 
days  evidence  is  in  an  incomplete  list — 
only  twenty-five — of  Brigham  Young's 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  153 

wives,  some  of  whom  bore  such  old  New 
England  patronymics  as  Angell,  Adams, 
Eoss,  Lawrence,  Bigelow,  Snow,  Folsom. 
May  a  fleeing  of  these  women  to  Mor- 
monism  be  explained  by  their  impatience 
and  heart-sickness  at  their  nnsexing 
social  condition  and  religious  spirit? — 
with  the  admitting  to  the  great  scheme 
of  life  and  action  but  one  sex  and  that 
the  one  to  which  their  theocratic  theo- 
logians belonged? 

Speculations  of  pure  philosophy  this 
New  England  woman  is  inclined  to  fear 
as  vicious.  In  dialectics  she  rests  upon 
the  glories  of  the  innocuous  transcen- 
dentalism of  the  nineteenth  century 
forties.  Exceptions  to  this  rule  are  per- 
haps those  veraciously  called  ^^ occult;'' 
for  she  will  run  to  listen  to  the  juggling 
logic  and  boasting  rhetoric  of  Swamis 
Alphadananda  and  Betadananda  and 
Gammadananda,  and  cluster  about  the 
audience-room  of  those  dusky  fakirs 
much  as  a  swarm  of  bees  flits  in  May. 


154  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

And  like  the  bees,  she  deserts  cells  filled 
with  honey  for  combs  machine-made  and 
wholly  empty. 

Illuminated  by  some  factitious  light, 
she  will  again  go  to  unheard-of  lengths 
in  extenuating  Shelley's  relations  to  his 
wives,  and  in  explaining  George  Eliot's 
marriage  to  her  first  husband.  Here, 
and  for  at  least  once  in  her  life,  she  com- 
bats convention  and  reasons  upon  natu- 
ral grounds.  ^^I  don't  see  the  wicked- 
ness of  Rudolph,"  said  one  spinster,  re- 
ferring to  the  tragedy  connecting  a 
prince  of  Austria  and  a  lady  of  the 
Vetchera  family.  '*I  don't  see  why  he 
shouldn't  have  followed  his  heart.  But 
I  shouldn't  dare  say  that  to  any  one 
else  in  Boston.  Most  of  them  think  as 
I  do,  but  they  would  all  be  shocked  to 
have  it  said." 

*  *  Consider  the  broad  meaning  of  what 
you  say.  Let  this  instance  become  a 
universal  law." 

^^  Still  I  believe  every  sensible  man 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND  WOMAN  155 

and  woman  applauds  Rudolph 's  inde- 
pendence. ' ' 

With  whatsoever  or  whomsoever  she 
is  in  sympathy  this  woman  is  apt  to  be 
a  partisan.  To  husband,  parents,  and 
children  there  could  be  no  more  devoted 
adherent.  Her  conscience,  developed 
by  introspective  and  subjective  ponder- 
ing, has  for  her  own  actions  abnormal 
size  and  activity.  It  is  always  alert, 
always  busy,  always  prodding,  and  not 
infrequently  sickened  by  its  congested 
activity.  Duty  to  those  about  her,  and 
industry  for  the  same  beneficiaries,  are 
watchwords  of  its  strength;  and  to  fail 
in  a  mote's  weight  is  to  gain  condem- 
nation of  two  severest  sorts — ^her  own 
and  the  community's.  The  opinion  of 
the  community  in  which  she  lives  is  her 
second  almighty  power. 

In  marriage  she  often  exemplifies  that 
saying  of  Euripides  which  StobaBUS  has 
preserved  among  the  lavender-scented 
leaves  of  his  Florilegium — ^^A  sympa- 


156  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

thetic  wife  is  a  man^s  best  possession." 
She  has  mental  sympathy — a  result  of 
her  tense  nervous  organization,  her 
altruism  in  domestic  life,  her  strong 
love,  and  her  sense  of  duty,  justice,  and 
right. 

In  body  she  belongs  to  a  people  which 
has  spent  its  physical  force  and  depleted 
its  vitality.  She  is  slight.  There  is  lack 
of  adipose  tissue,  reserve  force,  through- 
out her  frame.  Her  lungs  are  apt  to  be 
weak,  waist  normal,  and  hips  under- 
sized. 

She  is  awkward  in  movement.  Her 
climate  has  not  allowed  her  relaxation, 
and  the  ease  and  curve  of  motion  that 
more  enervating  air  imparts.  This  is 
seen  even  in  public.  In  walking  she 
holds  her  elbows  set  in  an  angle,  and 
sometimes  she  steps  out  in  the  tilt  of  the 
Cantabrigian  man.  In  this  is  perhaps 
an  unconscious  imitation,  a  sympathetic 
copying,  of  an  admirable  norm;  but  it 
is  graceless  in  petticoats.    As  she  steps 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  157 

she  knocks  her  skirt  with  her  knees,  and 
gives  you  the  impression  that  her  leg  is 
crooked,  that  she  does  not  lock  her  knee- 
joint.    More  often  she  toes  in  than  out. 

She  has  a  marvellously  delicate,  brill- 
iant, fine-grained  skin.  It  is  innocent 
of  powder  and  purely  natural.  No  beer 
in  past  generations  has  entered  its 
making,  and  no  port;  also,  little  flesh. 
In  New  England  it  could  not  be  said,  as 
a  London  writer  has  coarsely  put  it, 
that  a  woman  may  be  looked  upon  as  an 
aggregate  of  so  many  beefsteaks. 

Her  eyes  have  a  liquid  purity  and  pre- 
ternatural brightness;  she  is  the  child 
of  r^auxojTzi?  Athena,  rather  than  of  I^ocottc? 
Hera,  Pronuba,  and  ministress  to  women 
of  more  luxuriant  flesh.  The  brown  of 
her  hair  inclines  to  the  ash  shades. 

Her  features  would  in  passport  word- 
ing be  called  *^ regular.''  The  expres- 
sion of  her  face  when  she  lives  in  more 
prosperous  communities,  where  salaries 
are  and  an  assured  future,  is  a  stereo- 


158  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

typed  smile.  In  more  uncertain  life  and 
less  fortunate  surroundings,  her  coun- 
tenance shows  a  weariness  of  spirit  and 
a  homesickness  for  heaven  that  make 
your  soul  ache. 

Her  mind  is  too  self-conscious  on  the 
one  hand,  and  too  set  on  lofty  duties  on 
the  other,  to  allow  much  of  coquetterie, 
or  flirting,  or  a  femininely  accented 
camaraderie  with  men — such  as  the 
more  elemental  women  of  Chicago,  Cin- 
cinnati, San  Francisco,  and  New  York 
enjoy.  She  is  farthest  possible  from 
the  luxuriant  beauty  of  St.  Louis  who 
declared,  *^ You  bet!  black- jack-diamond 
kind  of  a  time!''  when  asked  if  she  had 
enjoyed  her  social  dash  in  Newport. 
This  New  England  woman  would,  for- 
sooth, take  no  dash  in  Aurovulgus.  But 
falling  by  chance  among  vulgarities  and 
iniquities,  she  guards  against  the  defile- 
ment of  her  lips,  for  she  loves  a  pure 
and  clean  usage  of  our  facile  English 
speech. 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND   WOMAN  159 

The  old  phase  of  the  New  England 
woman  is  passing.  It  is  the  hour  for 
some  poet  to  voice  her  threnody.  Social 
conditions  under  which  she  developed 
are  almost  obliterated.  She  is  already 
outnumbered  in  her  own  home  by  women 
of  foreign  blood,  an  ampler  physique, 
a  totally  different  religious  conception, 
a  far  different  conduct;  and  a  less  ex- 
alted ideal  of  life.  Intermixtures  will 
follow  and  racial  lines  gradually  fade. 
In  the  end  she  will  not  be.  Her  passing 
is  due  to  the  unnumbered  husbandless 
and  the  physical  attenuation  of  the  mar- 
ried— attenuation  resulting  from  their 
spare  and  meagre  diet,  and,  it  is  also 
claimed,  from  the  excessive  household 
labor  of  their  mothers.  More  pro- 
foundly causative — in  fact,  inciting  the 
above  conditions — was  the  distorted 
morality  and  debilitating  religion  im- 
pressed upon  her  sensitive  spirit.  May- 
hap in  this  present  decay  some  Moera 
is  punishing  that  awful  crime  of  self- 


160  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

sufficing  ecclesiasticism.  Her  unproduc- 
tivity — no  matter  from  what  reason, 
whether  from  physical  necessity  or  a 
spirit-searching  flight  from  the  wrath  of 
God — has  been  her  death. 


A    NEW    ENGLAND    ABODE 
OF   THE   BLESSED 


.    .    .    ^m  ^0ov\  TtouXu^oreiprj 
Zey?  Kpovtdr)^  Tcoirjffs  dcxatorepov  xat  apecoVy 
dvdpwv  ijpu)iav  OeTov  yivo^^   .    .    . 
To7^  3e  di^  avdptOTtwv  fiioTov  xal  ijOe  Sndffaa^ 
Zeh<s  Kpovidrj<$  xarivaffffe  Tzarijp  i?  izeipara  yatjj^' 
— xat  to),  ixkv  vaiooffiv  dx-qdia  doiiov  k'^ovre^ 
— iv  fiaxdpwv  yTJ(TOi(TC  Trap  ^^xeavov  ^aOudivrjv^ 
— oX^toi  ^p(OE<^  '  rolffiv  p.eXi7jdia  xapnov 
— Tp\<^  ereo?  Oakkovra  ^ipet  ^etdiopo^  apoupa. 

Hesiod 

Under  bloudie  Diocletian  ...  a  great  number 
of  Christians  which  were  assembled  togither  to 
heare  the  word  of  life  .  .  .  were  slaine  by  the 
wicked  pagans  at  Lichfield,  whereof  ...  as  you 
would  say,  The  field  of  dead  corpses. 

HOLINSHED 


A    NEW    ENGLAND    ABODE 
OF   THE   BLESSED 

Upon  the  broad  level  of  one  of  our 
Litchfield  hills  is — if  we  accept  ancient 
legend — a  veritable  Island  of  the 
Blessed.  There  heroes  fallen  after 
strong  fight  enjoy  rest  forever. 

The  domination  of  unyielding  law  in 
the  puny  affairs  of  men — the  unf athom- 
ableness  of  Moera,  the  lot  no  man  can 
escape — comes  upon  one  afresh  upon 
this  hill-top.    What  clay  we  are  in  the 

hands     of     fate!    "aTravra  rtxret  xOmv  izdXtv  re 

Xafi^dvsi,''  cried  Euripides — '^all  things 
the  earth  puts  forth  and  takes  again." 
But  why  should  the  efforts  of  men  to 
build  a  human  hive  have  here  been 
wiped  away — ^here  where  all  nature  is 
wholesome  and  in  seeming  unison  with 
regulated  human  life  ?  The  air  sparkles 
buoyantly  up  to  your  very  eyes — and 

163 


164  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

almost  intoxicates  you  with  its  life 
and  joy.  Through  its  day-translucence 
crows  cut  their  measured  flight  and 
brisker  birds  flitter,  and  when  the  young 
moon  shines  out  of  a  warm  west  elegiac 
whippoorwills  cry  to  the  patient  night. 

Neither  volcanic  ashes  nor  flood, 
whirlwind  nor  earthquake — mere  decay 
has  here  nullified  men's  efforts  for  con- 
gregated life  and  work.  The  soil  of  the 
hill,  porous  and  sandy,  is  of  moderate 
fertility.  Native  oaks  and  chestnuts, 
slender  birches  and  fragrant  hemlocks, 
with  undergrowths  of  coral-flowering 
laurel,  clothe  its  slopes.  Over  its  sand- 
stone ledges  brooks  of  soft  water  treble 
minor  airs — before  they  go  loitering 
among  succulent  grasses  and  spearmint 
and  other  thirsty  brothers  of  the  distant 
meadows. 

Nearly  two  hundred  years  ago  pio- 
neers of  a  Eoundhead,  independent  type 
— the  type  which  led  William  of  Orange 
across  the  Channel  for  preservation  of 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  165 

that  liberty  which  Englishmen  for  hun- 
dreds of  years  had  spoken  of  as  ^^an- 
tienf — such  men  broke  this  sod,  till 
then  untouched  by  axe  or  plough.  They 
made  clearings,  and  grouped  their 
hand-hewn  houses  just  where  in  cool 
mornings  of  summer  they  could  see  the 
mists  roll  up  from  their  hill-locked  pond 
to  meet  the  rosy  day ;  just  where,  when 
the  sun  sank  behind  the  distant  New 
York  mountains,  they  could  catch  within 
their  windows  his  last  shaft  of  gold. 

Here  they  laid  their  hearths  and  dwelt 
in  primitive  comfort.  Their  summers 
were  unspeakably  beautiful — and  hard- 
working. Their  autumns  indescribably 
brilliant,  hill-side  and  valley  uniting  to 
form  a  radiance  God's  hand  alone  could 
hold.  Their  winters  were  of  deep  snows 
and  cold  winds  and  much  cutting  and 
burning  of  wood.  The  first  voice  of 
their  virid  spring  came  in  the  bird-calls 
of  early  March,  when  snow  melted  and 
sap    mounted,    and    sugar   maples    ran 


166  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

syrup;  when  ploughs  were  sharpened, 
and  steaming  and  patient  oxen  rested 
their  sinews  through  the  long,  pious 
Sabbath. 

Wandering  over  this  village  site,  now 
of  fenced-in  fields,  you  find  here  and 
there  a  hearth  and  a  few  cobbles  piled 
above  it.  The  chimney-shaft  has  long 
since  disappeared.  You  happen  upon 
stone  curbs,  and  look  down  to  the  dark 
waters  of  wells.  You  come  upon  bushes 
of  old-fashioned,  curled-petal,  pink- 
sweet  roses  and  snowy  phlox,  and  upon 
tiger  lilies  flaunting  odalisque  faces  be- 
fore simple  sweetbrier,  and  upon  many 
another  garden  plant  which  ^^a  hand- 
some woman  that  had  a  fine  hand'' — as 
Izaak  Walton  said  of  her  who  made  the 
trout  fly — once  set  as  border  to  her  path. 
Possibly  the  very  hand  that  planted 
these  pinks  held  a  bunch  of  their  sweet- 
ness after  it  had  grown  waxen  and  cold. 
The  pinks  themselves  are  now  choked  by 
the  pushing  grass. 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  167 

And  along  this  line  of  gooseberry- 
bushes  we  trace  a  path  from  house  to 
barn.  Here  was  the  fireplace.  The 
square  of  small  boulders  yonder  marks 
the  barn  foundation.  Along  this  path 
the  house-father  bore  at  sunrise  and 
sunset  his  pails  of  foaming  milk.  Under 
that  elm  spreading  between  living-room^ 
and  barn  little  children  of  the  family 
built  pebble  huts,  in  these  rude  confines 
cradling  dolls  which  the  mother  had 
made  from  linen  of  her  own  weave,  or 
the  father  whittled  when  snow  had 
crusted  the  earth  and  made  vain  all  his 
hauling  and  digging. 

Those  winters  held  genial  hours. 
Nuts  from  the  woods  and  cider  from  the 
orchard  stood  on  the  board  near  by. 
Home-grown  wood  blazed  in  the  chim- 
ney; home-grown  chestnuts,  hidden  in 
the  ashes  by  busy  children,  popped  to 
expectant  hands;  house-mothers  sat 
with  knitting  and  spinning,  and  the 
father   and   farm-men   mended  fittings 


168  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

and  burnished  tools  for  the  spring  work. 
Outside  the  stars  glittered  through  a 
clear  sky  and  the  soundless  earth  below 
lay  muffled  in  sleep. 

Over  yonder  across  the  road  was  the 
village  post-office,  and  not  far  away 
were  stores  of  merchant  supplies.  But 
of  these  houses  no  vestige  now  remains. 
Where  the  post-house  stood  the  earth  is 
matted  with  ground-pine  and  gleaming 
with  scarlet  berries  of  the  wintergreen. 
The  wiping-out  is  as  complete  as  that  of 
the  thousand  trading-booths,  long  since 
turned  to  clay,  of  old  Greek  Mycenae,  or 
of  the  stalls  of  the  ancient  trading-folk 
dwelling  between  Jaffa  and  Jerusalem 
where  Tell-ej-Jezari  now  lies. 

The  church  of  white  clap-boards  which 
these  villagers  used  for  praise  and 
prayer — ^not  a  small  temple — still  abides. 
Many  of  the  snowy  houses  of  old  New 
England  worship  pierce  their  luminous 
ether  with  graceful  spires.  But  this 
meeting-house    lifts    a    square,    central 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  169 

bell-tower  which  now  leans  on  one  side 
as  if  weary  with  long  standing.  The  old 
bell  which  summoned  its  people  to  their 
pews  still  hangs  behind  green  blinds — 
a  not  unmusical  town-crier.  But  use, 
life,  good  works  have  departed  with 
those  whom  it  exhorted  to  church  duty, 
and  in  sympathy  with  all  the  human 
endeavor  it  once  knew,  but  now  fordone, 
in  these  days  it  never  rings  blithely,  it 
can  only  be  made  to  toll.  Possibly  it 
can  only  be  made  to  toll  because  of  the 
settling  of  its  supporting  tower.  But 
the  fact  remains;  and  who  knows  if 
some  wounded  spirit  may  not  be  dwell- 
ing within  its  brazen  curves,  sick  at 
heart  with  its  passing  and  ineffective 
years  ? 

Not  far  from  the  church,  up  a  swell 
of  the  land,  lies  the  burying-ground — a 
sunny  spot.  Pines  here  and  there,  also 
hemlocks  and  trees  which  stand  bare 
after  the  fall  of  leaves.  But  all  is  bright 
and  open,  not  a  hideous   stone-quarry 


170  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

such  as  in  our  day  vanity  or  untaught 
taste  makes  of  resting-places  of  our 
dead.  Gay-colored  mushrooms  waste 
their  luxurious  gaudiness  between  the 
trees,  and  steadfast  myrtle,  with  an 
added  depth  to  its  green  from  the  air's 
clarity,  binds  the  narrow  mounds  with 
ever-lengthening  cords. 

But  whether  they  are  purple  with 
the  violets  of  May  or  with  Michaelmas 
daisies,  there  is  rest  over  all  these 
mounds — **uber  alien  Gipfeln  ist  Euh'.'^ 
Daily  gossip  and  sympathy  these  neigh- 
bors had.  The  man  of  this  grave  was  he 
who  passed  many  times  a  day  up  and 
down  the  path  by  the  gooseberry-bushes 
and  bore  the  foaming  milk.  He  is  as 
voiceless  now  as  the  flies  that  buzzed 
about  his  shining  pail.  And  the  widow 
who  dwelt  across  the  road — she  of  the 
sad  eyes  who  sat  always  at  her  loom,  for 
her  youthful  husband  was  of  those  who 
never  came  back  from  the  massacre  of 
Fort  William  Henry — she  to  whom  this 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  171 

man  hauled  a  sled  of  wood  for  every  two 
he  brought  to  his  own  door,  to  whom  his 
family  carried  elderberry  wine,  cider, 
and  home  mince-meat  on  Thanksgiving 
— she,  too,  is  voiceless  even  of  thanks, 
her  body  lying  over  yonder,  now  in  com- 
plete rest — no  loom,  no  treadle,  no 
thumping,  no  whirring  of  spinning- 
wheel,  no  narrow  pinching  and  poverty, 
her  soul  of  heroic  endurance  joined  with 
her  long  separate  soldier  soul  of  action. 
The  pathos  of  their  lives  and  the 
warmth  of  their  humanity! — ^however 
coated  with  New  England  austerity. 
Many  touching  stories  these  little  head- 
stones tell — as  this : 

"  To  the  memory  of  Mrs.  Abigail,  Consort  of 
Mr.  Joseph  Merrill,  who  died  May  3rd,  1767,  in 
the  52  year  of  her  age." 

A  consort  in  royal  dignity  and  poetry 
is  a  sharer  of  one's  lot.  Mr.  Joseph 
Merrill  had  no  acquaintance  with  the 
swagger  and  pretension  of  courts,  and 
he  knew  no  poetry  save  his  hill-side, 


172  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

his  villagers,  and  the  mighty  songs  of 
the  Bible.  He  was  a  plain,  simple, 
Yankee  husbandman,  round-shouldered 
from  carrying  heavy  burdens,  coarse- 
handed  from  much  tilling  of  the  earth 
and  use  of  horse  and  cattle.  While  he 
listened  to  sermons  in  the  white  church 
down  the  slope,  his  eyes  were  often 
heavy  for  need  of  morning  sleep;  and 
many  a  Sunday  his  back  and  knees  ached 
from  lack  of  rest  as  he  stood  beside  the 
sharer  of  his  fortunes  in  prayer.  Yet 
his  simple  memorial  warms  the  human 
heart  one  hundred  and  thirty-eight 
years  after  his  ^^consorf  had  for  the 
last  time  folded  her  housewifely  hands. 

"  Of  sa  great  faith  and  charitie, 
With  mutuall  love  and  amitie : 
That  I  wat  an  mair  heavenly  life, 
Was  never  betweene  man  and  wife." 

It  was  doubtless  with  Master  Merrill 
as  with  the  subject  of  an  encomium  of 
Charles  Lamb's.  ^^ Though  bred  a  Pres- 
byterian," says  Lamb  of  Joseph  Paice, 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  173 

^  *  and  brought  up  a  merchant,  he  was  the 
finest  gentleman  of  his  time/' 

In  May,  1767,  when  this  sharer  of 
humble  fortune  lay  down  to  rest,  the 
Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed  but  four- 
teen months.  The  eyes  of  the  world 
were  upon  Pitt  and  Burke  and  Town- 
shend — and  Franklin  whose  memorable 
examination  before  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  then  circulating  as  a  news 
pamphlet.  The  social  gossip  of  the  day 
— as  Lady  Sarah  Lennox's  wit  recounts 
— ^had  no  more  recognition  of  the  vil- 
lagers than  George  the  Fourth. 

But  American  sinews  and  muscles 
such  as  these  hidden  on  the  Litchfield 
Hills  were  growing  in  daily  strength 
by  helpful,  human  exercise,  and  their 
^^  well-lined  braine"  was  reasoning  upon 
the  Declaratory  Act  that  ^^  Parliament 
had  power  to  bind  the  colonies  in  all 
cases  whatsoever." 

Another  stone  a  few  paces  away  has 
quite  another  story: 


174  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

"Here  lies  the  body  of  Mr.  Stephen  Kelsey,  who 

died  April  2,  1745,  in  y^  71  year  of  his  age 

as  you  are  so  was  we 

as  we  are  you  must  be" 

The  peculiarities  of  this  inscription 
were  doubtless  the  stone-cutter's;  and 
peradventure  it  was  in  the  following 
way  that  the  rhymes — already  centuries 
old  in  1745  when  Stephen  Kelsey  died — 
came  to  be  upon  his  headstone. 

The  carver  of  the  memorial  was  unde- 
niably a  neighbor  and  fellow-husband- 
man to  the  children  of  Mr.  Stephen 
Kelsey.  Money-earning  opportunities 
were  narrow  and  silver  hard  to  come  by 
in  the  pioneering  of  the  Litchfield  Hills, 
and  only  after  scrupulous  saving  had 
the  Kelsey  family  the  cost  of  the  head- 
stone at  last  in  hand.  It  was  then  that 
they  met  to  consider  an  epitaph. 

Their  neighbor  bespoken  to  work  the 
stone  was  at  the  meeting,  and  to  open 
the    way    and    clear    his    memory    he 


A  NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  175 

scratched  the  date  of  death  upon  a  tablet 
or  shingle  his  own  hand  had  riven. 

*^ Friend  Stephen's  death,"  he  began, 
^^calleth  to  mind  a  verse  often  sculp- 
tured in  the  old  church-yard  in  Leices- 
tershire, a  verse  satisfying  the  soul  with 
the  vanity  of  this  life,  and  turning  our 
eyes  to  the  call  from  God  which  is  to 
come.  It  toucheth  not  the  vexations  of 
the  world  which  it  were  vain  to  deny  are 
ever  present.  You  carry  it  in  your 
memory  mayhap.  Mistress  Eemem- 
branceT'  the  stone-master  interrupting 
himself  asked,  suddenly  appealing  to  a 
sister  of  Master  Kelsey. 

Mistress  Eemembrance,  an  elderly 
spinster  whose  lover  having  in  their 
youth  taken  the  great  journey  to  New 
York,  and  crossed  the  Devil's  Stepping- 
Stones — which  before  the  memory  of 
man  some  netherworld  force  laid  an 
entry  of  Manhattan  Island — ^had  never 
again  returned  to  the  Litchfield  Hills 
— Mistress    Eemembrance   recalled   the 


176  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

verses,  and  also  her  brother,  Master 
Stephen's,  sonorous  repetition  of  them. 

In  this  way  it  came  abont  that 
the  mourning  family  determined  they 
should  be  engraven.  And  there  the  lines 
stand  to-day  in  the  hills'  beautiful  air — 
far  more  than  a  century  since  the  hour 
when  Mistress  Remembrance  and  the 
stone-cutter  joined  the  celestial  choir  in 
which  Master  Stephen  was  that  very 
evening  singing. 

But  another  headstone — 

"With  uncouth  rhymes  and   shapeless   sculpture 
decked"— 

quite  outdoes  Master  Kelsey's  in 
strange  English  phrase.    It  reads : 

"Michel  son  of  John  Spencer 
died  Jan  ye  24***  1756  in  y®  lO^h  year  of  his  age. 
Death  Conquers  All 
Both  young  and  Old 
Tho^  ne'er  so  wise 
Discreet  and  Bold 
In  helth  and  Strength 
this  youth  did  Die 
in  a  moment  without  one  Cry.'* 


A  NEW   ENGLAND  ABODE  177 

And  still  another  perpetuates  the 
record  of  the  same  family : 

In  Memory  of 

Mr  John  Spencer  Who 

Died  June  y^  24th 

1780  in  the  70th 

Year  of  his  Age 

In  Memory  of  Submit 

Spencer  Daughter  of  Mr 

John  and  Mrs  Mary 

Spencer  Who  Died 

Novbr  ye  21tii  1755  in  ye 

1st  Year  of  her  Age 

Oh  Cruel  Death  to  fill  this 

Narrow  space  In  yonder 

House  Made  a  vast  emty  place 

Was  the  child  called  ^'Submit''  be- 
cause born  a  woman!  Or  did  the 
parents  embody  in  the  name  their  own 
spiritual  history  of  resignation  to  the 
eternal  powers? — 'Ho  fill  this  narrow 
space,  in  yonder  house  made  a  vast 
empty  place.'' 

Farther  up  the  slope  of  this  God's 

12 


178  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Acre  a  shaft  standing  high  in  the  soft 
light  mourns  the  hazards  of  our  passage 
through  the  world. 

In  Memory  of  Mr. 
Jeduthun  Goodwin  who 
Died  Feb  13th  1809  Aged 

40  Years 
Also  Mrs.  Eunice  his 
Wife  who  died  August  6*^ 
1802  Aged  33  Years 
Dangers  stand  thick 
through  all  the  Ground 
To  Push  us  to  the  Tomb 
And  fierce  diseases 
Wait  around 
To  hurry  Mortals  home 

Every  village  has  its  tragedy,  alas! 
and  that  recounted  in  this  following  in- 
scription is  at  least  one  faithful  record 
of  terrifying  disaster.  Again  it  seems  at 
variance  with  the  moral  order  of  the 
world  that  these  quiet  fields  should  wit- 
ness the  terror  this  tiny  memorial  hints 
at.    The  stone  is  quite  out  of  plumb  and 


A   NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  179 

moss-covered,  but  underneath  the  lichen 
it  reads : 

"Phebe,  wife  of  Ezekiel  Markham  Died  Jyly  14, 

1806  Ae  49 

Also  their  3  Sons  Bela,   Ciba,  and  Brainad  was 

burnt  to  Death  in  Oct  1793" 

"  In  the  midst  of  life  we  are  dead" 

The  mother  lived  nearly  thirteen 
years  after.  There  is  no  neighboring 
record  of  the  father.  Perhaps  the  two 
migrated  after  the  fearful  holocaust, 
and  he  only  returned  to  place  his  wife's 
body  beside  the  disfigured  remains  of 
her  little  ungrown  men.  Bela,  Ciba,  and 
Brainard  rested  lonesomely  doubtless 
those  thirteen  waiting  years,  and  many 
a  night  must  their  little  ghosts  have  sat 
among  the  windflowers  and  hepaticas  of 
spring,  or  wandered  midst  the  drifted 
needles  of  the  pines  in  the  clear  moon- 
light of  summer,  athirst  for  the  mother's 
soul  of  comfort  and  courage. 

Again  in  this  intaglio  **  spelt  by  th' 


180  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

unlettered  Muse'^  rises  the  question  of 
the  stone-cutter's  knowledge  of  his 
mother  tongue.  The  church  of  the  dead 
villagers  still  abides.  But  nowhere  are 
seen  the  remains  of  a  school-house. 
Descendants  of  the  cutter  of  Master 
Kelsey's  headstone  haply  had  many 
orders. 

The  sun  of  Indian  summer  upon  the 
fallen  leaves  brings  out  their  pungent 
sweetness.  Except  the  blossoms  of  the 
subtle  witch-hazel  all  the  flowers  are 
gone.  The  last  fringed  gentian  fed  by 
the  oozing  spring  down  the  hill-side 
closed  its  blue  cup  a  score  of  days  ago. 
Every  living  thing  rests.  The  scene  is 
filled  with  a  strange  sense  of  waiting. 
And  above  is  the  silence  of  the  sky. 

"With  such  influences  supervening 
upon  their  lives,  these  people  of  the 
early  village — undisturbed  as  they  were 
by  any  world  call,  and  gifted  with  a 
fervid  and  patient  faith — must  daily 
have  grown  in  consciousness  of  a  homely 


A  NEW   ENGLAND  ABODE  181 

Presence  ever  reaching  under  their  mor- 
tality the  Everlasting  Arm. 

This  potency  abides,  its  very  feeling 
is  in  the  air  above  these  graves — that 
some  good,  some  divine  is  impendent — 
that  the  soul  of  the  world  is  outstretch- 
ing a  kindred  hand. 

In  the  calm  and  other-worldliness  of 
their  hill-top  the  eternal  moralities  of 
the  Deuteronomy  and  of  Sophocles  stand 
clearer  to  human  vision — the  good  that 
is  mighty  and  never  grows  gray, —  ;*^r«? 

^v  rouTOi?  Geo?,  oude  yrjpdffxet. 

The  comings  and  goings,  the  daily 
labors,  the  hopes  and  interests  of  these 
early  dwellers  make  an  unspeakable 
appeal — their  graves  in  the  church-yard, 
the  ruined  foundations  of  their  domestic 
life  beyond — that  their  output  of  lives 
and  years  of  struggle  bore  no  more  last- 
ing local  fruit,  however  their  seed  may 
now  be  scattered  to  the  upbuilding  of 
our  South  and  West,  the  conversion  of 
China,  and  our  ordering  of  the  Philip- 
pines. 


182  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

And  yet,  although  their  habitations 
are  fallen,  they — such  men  and  women 
as  they — still  live.  Their  hearts,  hands, 
and  heads  are  in  all  institutions  of  ours 
that  are  free.  A  great  immortality, 
surely !  If  such  men  and  women  had 
been  less  severe,  less  honest,  less  gifted 
for  conditions  barren  of  luxuries,  less 
elevated  with  an  enthusiasm  for  justice, 
less  clear  in  their  vision  of  the  eternal 
moralities,  less  simple  and  direct,  less 
worthy  inheritors  of  the  great  idea  of 
liberty  which  inflamed  generations  of 
their  ancestors,  it  is  not  possible  that 
we  should  be  here  to-day  doing  our  work 
to  keep  what  they  won  and  carry  their 
winnings  further.  Their  unswerving 
independence  in  .thought  and  action  and 
their  conviction  that  the  finger  of  God 
pointed  their  way — their  theocratic 
faith,  their  lifted  sense  of  God-leading 
— made  possible  the  abiding  of  their 
spirit  long  after  their  material  body  lay 
spent. 


A  NEW   ENGLAND   ABODE  183 

So  it  is  that  upon  the  level  top  of  the 
Litchfield  Hills — what  with  the  decay  of 
the  material  things  of  life  and  the  divine 
permanence  of  the  spiritual — there  is  a 
resting-place  of  the  Blessed — an  Island 
of  the  Blessed  as  the  old  Greeks  used 
to  say — an  abode  of  heroes  fallen  after 
strong  fighting  and  enjoying  rest  for- 
ever. 


UP-TO-DATE    MISOGYNY 


He  is  the  half  part  of  a  blessed  man 
Left  to  be  finished  by  such  a  she  ; 
And  she  a  fair  divided  excellence, 
Whose  fulness  of  perfection  lies  in  him. 

Shakespeare 

If  a  man  recognise  in  woman  any 
quality  which  transcends  the  qualities 
demanded  in  a  plaything  or  handmaid 
— if  he  recognise  in  her  the  existence  of 
an  intellectual  life  not  essentially  dis- 
similar to  his  own,  he  must,  by  plainest 
logic,  admit  that  life  to  express  itself  in 
all  its  spontaneous  forms  of  activity. 

George  Eliot 

Hard  the  task  :  your  prison-chamber 

Widens  not  for  lifted  latch 
Till  the  giant  thews  and  sinews 

Meet  their  Godlike  overmatch. 

George  Meredith 


UP-TO-DATE    MISOGYNY 

**I  HATE  every  woman!*'  cries  Eurip- 
ides, in  keen  iambics  in  a  citation  of 
the  Florilegium  of  Stobaeus.  The  senti- 
ment was  not  new  with  Euripides — un- 
fortunately. Before  him  there  was 
bucolic  Hesiod  with  his  precepts  on 
wife-choosing.  There  was  Simonides 
of  Amorgos,  who  in  outcrying  the  deg- 
radation of  the  Ionian  women  told  the 
degradation  of  the  Ionian  men.  There 
was  Hipponax,  who  fiercely  sang  ^Hwo 
days  on  which  a  woman  gives  a  man 
most  pleasure — the  day  he  marries  her 
and  the  day  he  buries  her. ' ' 

And  along  with  Euripides  was  Aris- 
tophanes, the  radiant  laughter-lover, 
the  titanic  juggler  with  the  heavens 
above  and  earth  and  men  below — Aris- 
tophanes   who    flouted    the    women    of 

187 


188  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Athens  in  his  *  ^  Ecclesiazusae, ' '  and  in 
the  ^^ Clouds"  and  his  ^ ' Thesmophoria- 
zusae."  Thucydides  before  them  had 
named  but  one  woman  in  his  whole 
great  narrative,  and  had  avoided  the 
mention  of  women  and  their  part  in  the 
history  he  relates. 

** Woman  is  a  curse!''  cried  Susarion. 
The  Jews  had  said  it  before,  when  they 
told  the  story  of  Eve — 

"  Of  man's  first  disobedience,  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world,  and  all  our  woe." 

Down  through  many  centuries  our 
forebears  cast  to  and  fro  the  same  senti- 
ment— in  spite  of  the  introduction  into 
life  and  literature  of  the  love  of  men 
for  women  and  women  for  men ;  in  spite 
of  the  growth  of  romantic  love.  You 
find  misogynous  expression  among  the 
Latins.  In  early  ** Church  Fathers,'' 
such  as  St.  John  Chrysostom,  you  come 
upon  it  in  grossest  form.     Woman  is 


UP-TO-DATE  MISOGYNY  189 

**a  necessary  ill/'  cried  the  Golden 
Mouthed,  ^^a  natural  temptation,  a 
wished-for  calamity,  a  household  dan- 
ger, a  deadly  fascination,  a  bepainted 
evil.'' 

You  see  the  sentiment  in  the  laws  of 
church  and  of  kingdom.  You  sight  its 
miasm  in  the  gloaming  and  murk  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  amid  the  excesses  which  in 
shame  for  it  chivalry  affected  and  ex- 
alted. You  read  it  by  the  light  of  the 
awful  fires  that  burnt  women  accessory 
to  the  husband's  crime — for  which  their 
husbands  were  merely  hanged.  You  see 
it  in  Martin  Luther's  injunction  to 
Catherine  von  Bora  that  it  ill  became 
his  wife  to  fasten  her  waist  in  front — 
because  independence  in  women  is  un- 
seemly, their  dress  should  need  an 
assistant  for  its  donning.  You  chance 
upon  it  in  old  prayers  written  by  men, 
and  once  publicly  said  by  men  for  Eng- 
lish queens  to  a  God  **  which  for  the 
offence  of  the  first  woman  hast  threat- 


190  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

ened  unto  all  women  a  common,  sharp, 
and  inevitable  malediction. ' ' 

You  find  the  sentiment  in  Boileau's 
satire  and  in  Pope's  ^ ^ Characters. ' ' 
You  open  the  pages  of  the  Wizard  of 
the  North,  who  did  for  his  own  genera- 
tions what  Heliodorus  and  his  chaste 
Chariclea  accomplished  for  the  fourth 
century,  and  you  come  upon  Walter 
Scott  singing  in  one  of  his  exquisite 
songs — 

"  Woman's  faith,  and  woman's  trust, 
Write  the  characters  in  dust." 

All  such  sad  evidences,  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind,  are  but  the  reverse  of 
the  fair  picture  with  which  men  have 
regarded  women.  But  because  there  is 
a  reverse  side,  and  its  view  has  entered 
and  still  enters  largely  into  human  life, 
human  estimates,  and  human  fate,  it 
should  be  spoken  about  openly.  Women 
and  men  inexperienced  in  the  outer 
world  of  affairs  do  not  realize  its  still 
potent  force. 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  191 

As  for  the  subject  of  these  gibes,  for 
ages  they  were  silent.  During  many 
generations,  in  the  privacy  of  their 
apartments,  the  women  must  have  made 
mute  protests  to  one  another.  ^^  These 
things  are  false,"  their  souls  cried. 
But  they  took  the  readiest  defence  of 
physical  weakness,  and  they  loved  har- 
mony. It  was  better  to  be  silent  than 
to  rise  in  bold  proof  of  an  untruth  and 
meet  rude  force. 

Iteration  and  dogmatic  statement  of 
women's  moral  inferiority,  coupled  as 
it  often  was  with  quoted  text  and 
priestly  authority,  had  their  inevitable 
effect  upon  more  sensitive  and  intro- 
spective characters;  it  humiliated  and 
unquestionably  deprived  many  a  woman 
of  self-respect.  Still,  all  along  there 
must  have  been  a  less  sensitive,  sturdier, 
womanhood  possessed  of  the  perversive 
faith  of  Mrs.  Poyser,  that  ^^  heaven 
made  'em  to  match  the  men,"  that — 

"  Together,  dwarfed  or  godlike,  bond  or  free," — 


192  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

men  and  women  rise  or  sink;  that,  in 
fact,  the  interests  of  the  two  are  insep- 
arable and  wholly  identical.  To  broad 
vision  misogynous  expression  seems  to 
set  in  antagonism  forces  united  by  all 
the  mighty  powers  of  human  evolution 
throughout  millions  of  years,  and  the 
whole  plan  of  God  back  of  that  soul- 
unfolding. 

The  misogynous  song  and  story  of 
our  forebears  with  momentous  fall  de- 
scended and  became  the  coarse  news- 
paper quip  which  a  generation  ago 
whetted  its  sting  upon  women — ^^  Susan 
B.  Anthonys" — outspoken  and  seeking 
more  freedom  than  social  prejudices  of 
their  day  allowed.  An  annoying  gnat, 
it  has  in  these  days  been  almost  exter- 
minated by  diffusion  of  the  oil  of  fair- 
ness and  better  knowledge. 

But  even  yet  periodicals  at  times  give 
mouth  to  the  old  misogyny.  Such  an 
expression,  nay,  two,  are  published  in 
otherwise    admirable   pages,    and   with 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  193 

these  we  have  to  do.  They  are  from  the 
pen  of  a  man  of  temperament,  energy, 
vigorous  learning,  and  an  ^^  esurient 
Genie''  for  books — professor  of  Latin 
in  one  of  our  great  universities,  where 
misogynous  sentiment  has  found  expres- 
sion in  lectures  in  course  and  also  in 
more  public  delivery. 

The  first  reverse  phrase  is  of  ^Hhe 
neurotic  caterwauling  of  an  hysterical 
woman.''  Cicero's  invective  and  pathos 
are  said  to  be  perilously  near  that  per- 
turbance. 

Now  specialists  in  nervous  difficulties 
have  not  yet  determined  there  is  marked 
variation  between  neurotic  caterwauling 
of  hysterical  women  and  neurotic  cat- 
erwauling of  hysterical  men.  Cicero's 
shrieks — for  Cicero  was  what  is  to-day 
called  *  Virile,"  ^^  manly,"  ^  *  strenuous, " 
*Wital" — Cicero's  would  naturally  ap- 
proximate the  men's. 

To  normally  tuned  ears  caterwaul- 
ings  are  as  unagreeable  as  misogynous 

13 


194  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

whoops — ^waulings  of  men  as  cacopho- 
nous as  waulings  of  women.  Take  an 
instance  in  times  foregone.  In  what  is 
the  megalomaniac  whine  of  Marie  Bash- 
kirtseff's  ^^ Journal''  more  unagreeable 
than  the  egotistical  vanity  of  Lord 
Byron's  wails?  Each  of  these  pen  peo- 
ple may  be  viewed  from  another  point. 
More  generously  any  record — even  an 
academic  misogyny — is  of  interest  and 
value  because  expressing  the  idiosyn- 
cratic development  or  human  feeling  of 
the  world. 

But,  exactly  and  scientifically  speak- 
ing, neurotic  and  hysteric  are  contra- 
dictory terms.  Neurotic  men  and 
women  are  described  by  physicians  as 
self-forgetting  sensitives — zealous,  ex- 
ecutive; while  the  hysterics  of  both 
sexes  are  supreme  egotists,  selfish,  vain, 
and  vague,  uncomfortable  both  in  per- 
sonal and  literary  contact — just  like  wit 
at  their  expense.  ^*If  we  knew  all,'* 
said  George  Eliot,  who  was  never  hys- 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  195 

terical,  ^^we  would  not  judge/'  And 
Paul  of  Tarsus  wrote  wisely  to  those 
of  Rome,  ^^  Therefore  thou  art  inexcu- 
sable, 0  man,  whosoever  thou  art,  that 
judgest. ' ' 

Science  nowadays  declares  that  the 
man  who  wears  a  shirt-collar  cannot  be 
well,  and  equally  the  same  analytic 
spirit  may  some  day  make  evident  that 
neurosis  and  hysteria  are  legacies  of 
a  foredone  generation,  who  found  the 
world  out  of  joint  and  preyed  upon  its 
strength  and  calmness  of  nerve  to  set 
things  right.  Humaneness  and  fair  esti- 
mate are  remedies  to-day's  dwellers 
upon  the  earth  can  offer,  whether  the 
neurosis  and  hysteria  be  Latin  or  Saxon, 
men's  or  indeed  women's. 

The  second  of  the  phrases  to  which 
we  adverted  tells  of  ^Hhe  unauthorita- 
tive young  women  who  make  diction- 
aries at  so  much  a  mile."  It  has  the 
smack  of  the  wit  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury— of    Pope's    studied    and    never- 


196  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

ceasing  gibes  at  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu  after  she  had  given  him  the 
mitten;  of  Dr.  Johnson's  ^^ female  day'' 
and  his  rumbling  thunder  over  ^Hhe 
freaks  and  humors  and  spleen  and 
vanity  of  women" — ^he  of  all  men  who 
indulge  in  freaks  and  humors  and  spleen 
and  vanity! — whose  devotion  to  his  be- 
painted  and  bedizened  old  wife  was  the 
talk  of  their  literary  London. 

We  are  apt  to  believe  the  slurs  that 
Pope,  Johnson,  and  their  self-applaud- 
ing colaborers  cast  upon  what  they  com- 
monly termed  *  ^  females ' '  as  deterrent  to 
their  fairness,  favor,  and  fame.  The 
high-noted  laugh  which  sounded  from 
Euphelia's  morning  toilet  and  helped 
the  self-gratulation  of  those  old  beaux 
not  infrequently  grates  upon  our  twen- 
tieth century  altruistic,  neurotic  sensi- 
bilities. 

But  to  return  to  our  lamb.  An  un- 
authoritative young  woman,  we  suppose, 
is  one  who  is  not  authoritative,  who  has 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  197 

not  authority.  But  what  confers  author- 
ity? Assumption  of  it?  Very  rarely 
anything  else — even  in  the  case  of  a  col- 
lege professor.  We  have  in  our  blessed 
democracy  no  Academy,  no  Sanhedrim, 
no  keeper  of  the  seal  of  authority — and 
while  we  have  not  we  keep  life,  strength, 
freedom  in  our  veins.  The  young 
woman  ^^who  makes  dictionaries  at  so 
much  a  mile''  may  be — sometimes  is — 
as  fitted  for  authority  and  the  exercise 
of  it  as  her  brother.  Academic  as  well 
as  popular  prejudices,  both  springing 
mainly  from  the  masculine  mind,  make 
him  a  college  professor,  and  her  a 
nameless  drudge  exercising  the  quali- 
ties women  have  gained  from  centuries 
of  women's  life — sympathetic  service 
with  belittling  recognition  of  their 
work,  self-sacrifice,  and  infinite  care 
and  patience  for  detail. 

Too  many  of  our  day,  both  of  men 
and  women,  still  believe  with  old  John 
Knox — to  glance  back  even  beyond  John- 


198  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

son  and  Pope — and  his  sixteenth  cen- 
tury ^^  First  Blast  of  the  Trumpet 
against  the  Monstrous  Eegiment  of 
Women '^ — a  fine  example  of  hysterical 
shrieking  in  men,  by  the  way.  With  the 
loving  estimate  of  Knox's  contempo- 
rary, Mr.  John  Davidson,  we  heartily 
agree  when  he  sings — 

"  For  Weill  I  wait  that  Scotland  never  bure, 

In  Scottis  leid  ane  man  mair  Eloquent, 
Into  perswading  also  I  am  sure, 

Was  nane  in  Europe  that  was  mair  potent. 

In  Greik  and  Hebrew  he  was  excellent, 
And  als  in  Latine  toung  his  propernes. 

Was  tryit  trym  quhen  scoUers  wer  present. 
Bot  thir  wer  nathing  till  his  uprichtnes." 

We  admire  Knox's  magnificent  moral 
courage  and  the  fruits  of  that  courage 
which  the  Scots  have  long  enjoyed,  and 
yet  anent  the  *^  cursed  Jesabel  of  Eng- 
land,'' the  ^^cruell  monstre  Marie," 
Knox  cries:  ^'To  promote  a  Woman  to 
beare    rule,    superiorite,    dominion,    or 


UP-TO-DATE  MISOGYNY  199 

empire  ...  is  repugnant  to  Nature, 
contumelie  to  God,  a  thing  most  contra- 
rious  to  his  revealed  will  and  approved 
ordinance^' — just  as  if  he,  John  Knox, 
knew  all  about  God's  will  and  Nature's 
designs.  What  pretence,  John!  But 
John  took  it  upon  himself  to  say  he  did. 
He  assumed;  and  time  and  events  have 
proved  that  it  was  sheer  assumption  on 
John 's  part.  I  doubt,  were  he  now  here, 
if  he  would  let  a  modest,  bread-earning 
woman  even  make  dictionaries  at  so 
much  a  mile — ^nothing  beyond  type- 
writing, surely.  He  would  probably 
assume  authority  and  shriek  hysterically 
that  anything  beyond  the  finger-play  of 
type-writing  is  repugnant  to  Nature  and 
contrarious  to  God. 

There  was  a  Mrs.  John  Knox;  there 
were  two  in  fact — ribs. 

^^  That  servent  faithfull  servand  of 
the  Lord''  took  the  first  slip  of  a  girl 
when  near  his  fiftieth  year,  long  after  he 
had  left  the  celibate  priesthood ;  and  the 


200  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

second,  a  lass  of  sixteen,  when  he  was 
fifty-nine.  They  took  care  of  John,  a 
mother-in-law  helping,  and  with  service 
and  money  gave  him  leisure  to  write. 
The  opinions  of  the  dames  do  not  appear 
in  their  husband's  hysteria.  ^'I  use  the 
help  of  my  left  hand,''  dictated  Knox 
when  one  of  these  girl-wives  was  writing 
for  him  a  letter. 

With  the  young  women  we  are  consid- 
ering there  is  this  eternal  variation 
from  John  Knox  and  his  hysterical  kin, 
Celt,  Saxon,  or  Latin — she  does  not 
assume  authority.  Consequently  she 
makes  dictionaries  at  so  much  a  mile. 
Such  word-spinning  was  at  one  time 
done  by  drudge  men — men  who  had 
failed  mayhap  in  the  church,  or  in  law, 
or  had  distaste  for  material  develop- 
ments or  shame  for  manual  work.  Now, 
with  women  fortified  by  the  learning 
their  colleges  afford,  it  is  oftenest  done 
by  drudge  women.  The  law  of  com- 
merce prevails — women   gain  the   task 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  201 

because  they  will  take  much  less  a  mile 
than  men.  Men  offer  them  less  than 
they  would  dare  offer  a  man  similarly 
equipped. 

But  why  should  our  brothers  who 
teach  sophomores  at  so  much  a  year 
fleer?  even  if  the  woman  has  got  the 
job!  Does  not  this  arrangement  afford 
opportunity  for  a  man  to  affix  his  name 
to  her  work?  In  unnumbered — and  con- 
cealed— instances.      We    all    remember 

how  in  the  making  of  the dictionary 

the  unauthoritative  woman  did  the  work, 
and  the  unauthoritative  man  wrote  the 
introduction,  and  the  authoritative  man 
affixed  his  name  to  it.    We  all  remember 

that,  surely.    Then  there  is  the ; 

and  the .  We  do  not  fear  to  men- 
tion names,  we  merely  pity  and  do  not 
— and  we  nurse  pity  because  with  Aris- 
totle we  believe  that  it  purifies  the  heart. 
With  small  knowledge  of  the  publishing 
world,  I  can  count  five  such  make-ups  as 
I  here  indicate.    In  one  case  an  authori- 


202  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

tative  woman  did  her  part  of  the  work 
under  the  explicit  agreement  that  her 
name  should  be  upon  the  title-page.  In 
the  end,  by  a  trick,  in  order  to  advertise 
the  man's,  it  appeared  only  in  the  first 
edition.  Yet  this  injustice  in  nowise  de- 
prived her  of  a  heart  of  oak. 

The  commercial  book-building  world, 
as  it  at  present  stands — the  place  where 
they  write  dictionaries  and  world's  lit- 
eratures at  so  much  a  mile — is  apt  to 
think  a  woman  is  out  in  its  turmoil  for 
her  health,  or  for  sheer  amusement ;  not 
for  the  practical  reasons  men  are.  An 
eminent  opinion  declared  the  other  day 
that  they  were  there  ^  ^  to  get  a  trousseau 
or  get  somebody  to  get  it  for  'em.''  An- 
other exalted  judgment  asserted,  **The 
first  thing  they  look  round  the  office  and 
see  who  there  is  to  marry. ' ' 

This  same  world  exploits  her  labor; 
it  pays  her  a  small  fraction  of  what  it 
pays  a  man  engaged  in  the  identical 
work ;  it  seizes,  appropriates,  and  some- 


UP-TO-DATE    MISOGYNY  203 

times  grows  rich  upon  her  ideas.  It 
never  thinks  of  advancing  her  to  large 
duties  because  of  her  efficiency  in  small. 
She  is  ^^only  a  woman/'  and  with 
Ibsen's  great  Pillar  of  Society  the  busi- 
ness world  thinks  she  should  be  ^*  con- 
tent to  occupy  a  modest  and  becoming 
position.''  The  capacities  of  women 
being  varied,  would  not  large  positions 
rightly  appear  modest  and  becoming  to 
large  capacities? 

For  so  many  centuries  men  have  esti- 
mated a  woman's  service  of  no  money 
value  that  it  is  hard,  at  the  opening  of 
the  twentieth,  to  believe  it  equal  to  even 
a  small  part  of  a  man's  who  is  doing  the 
same  work.  In  one  late  instance  a 
woman  at  the  identical  task  of  editing 
was  paid  less  than  one-fortieth  the  sum 
given  her  colaborer,  a  man,  whose  prod- 
ucts were  at  times  submitted  to  her  for 
revision  and  correction.  In  such  cases 
the  men  are  virtually  devouring  the 
women — not    quite    so    openly,    yet    as 


204  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

truly,  as  the  Tierra  del  Fuegians  of 
whom  Darwin  tells :  when  pressed  in 
winter  by  hunger  they  choke  their 
women  with  smoke  and  eat  them.  In 
our  instance  just  cited  the  feeding 
upon  was  less  patent,  but  the  choking 
with  smoke  equally  unconcealed. 

The  very  work  of  these  so-called  un- 
authoritative women  passes  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world  uninstructed  in  the  present 
artfulness  of  book-making  as  the  work 
of  so-called  authoritative  men.  It  is 
therefore  authoritative. 

Not  in  this  way  did  the  king-critic  get 
together  his  dictionary.  Johnson 's  work 
evidences  his  hand  on  every  page  and 
almost  in  every  paragraph.  But  things 
are  changed  from  the  good  old  times  of 
individual  action.  We  now  have  literary 
trusts  and  literary  monopolies.  Now- 
adays the  duties  of  an  editor-in-chief 
may  be  to  oversee  each  day's  labor,  to 
keep  a  sharp  eye  upon  the  ^^authori- 
tative''    men     and     ^^unauthoritative" 


UP-TO-DATE    MISOGYNY  205 

women  whose  work  he  bargained  for  at 
so  much  a  mile,  and,  when  they  finish  the 
task,  to  indite  his  name  as  chief  worker. 

Would  it  be  reasonable  to  suppose 
that — suffering  such  school-child  disci- 
pline and  effacement — those  twentieth 
century  writers  nourished  the  estimate 
of  ^^booksellers''  with  which  Michael 
Drayton  in  the  seventeenth  century 
enlivened  a  letter  to  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden! — **They  are  a  company 
of  base  knives  whom  I  both  scorn  and 
kick  at." 

It  is  under  such  conditions  as  that  just 
cited  that  we  hear  a  book  spoken  of  as 
if  it  were  a  piece  of  iron,  not  a  product 
of  thought  and  feeling  carefully  propor- 
tioned and  measured ;  as  if  it  were  the 
fruit  of  a  day  and  not  of  prolonged 
thought  and  application;  as  if  it  could 
be  easily  reproduced  by  the  application 
of  a  mechanical  screw;  as  if  it  were  a 
bar  of  lead  instead  of  far-reaching  wings 
to  minister  good;   as  if  it  were  a  thing 


206  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

to  step  upon  rather  than  a  thing  to  reach 
to ;  as  if  it  could  be  cut,  slashed,  twisted, 
distorted,  instead  of  its  really  forming 
an  organic  whole  with  the  Aristotelian 
breath  of  unity,  and  the  cutting  or  ham- 
pering of  it  would  be  performing  a  sur- 
gical operation  which  might  entirely  let 
out  its  breath  of  life. 

Until  honor  is  stronger  among  human 
beings — that  is,  until  the  business  world 
is  something  other  than  a  maelstrom  of 
hell — ^it  is  unmanly  and  unwomanly  to 
gibe  at  the  ^^unauthoritative"  young 
woman  writing  at  so  much  a  mile.  She 
may  be  bearing  heavy  burdens  of  debt 
incurred  by  another.  She  may  be  sup- 
porting a  decrepit  father  or  an  idle 
brother.  She  is  bread-earning.  Often- 
est  she  is  gentle,  and,  like  the  strapped 
dog  which  licks  the  hand  that  lays  bare 
his  brain,  she  does  not  strike  back.  But 
she  has  an  inherent  sense  of  honesty  and 
dishonesty,  and  she  knows  what  justice 
is.    Her  knowledge  of  life,  the  residuum 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  207 

of  her  Tinauthoritative  literary  expe- 
rience, shows  her  the  rare  insight  and 
truth  of  Mr.  Howells  when  he  wrote, 
^^  There  is  no  happy  life  for  a  woman — 
except  as  she  is  happy  in  suffering  for 
those  she  loves,  and  in  sacrificing  her- 
self to  their  pleasure,  their  pride,  and 
ambition.  The  advantage  that  the  world 
oifers  her — and  it  does  not  always  offer 
her  that — is  her  choice  in  self-sacrifice. ' ' 
Ten  to  one — a  hundred  to  one — the 
young  woman  is  '^unauthoritative^'  be- 
cause she  is  not  peremptory,  is  not  dic- 
tatorial, assumes  no  airs  of  authority 
such  as  swelling  chest  and  overbearing 
manners,  is  sympathetic  with  another's 
egotism,  is  altruistic,  is  not  egotistical 
with  the  egotism  that  is  unwilling  to  cast 
forth  its  work  for  the  instructing  and 
furthering  of  human  kind  unless  it  is 
accompanied  by  the  writer's  name — a 
' '  signed  article. ' '  She  is  not  selfish  and 
guarding  the  ego.  Individual  fame 
seems  to  her  view  an  ephemeral  thing, 


208  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

but  the  aggregate  good  of  mankind  for 
which  she  works,  eternal. 

The  beaux  of  that  century  of  Dr.  John- 
son's  were  great  in  spite  of  their  sneers 
and  taunts  at  the  Clarindas  and  Euphe- 
lias  and  Fidelias,  not  on  account  of  them. 
We  have  no  publication  which  is  to  our 
time  as  the  ^'Rambler"  was  to  London 
in  1753,  or  the  ^^ Spectator,''  ^^Tatler,'' 
and  ^^ Englishman"  to  Queen  Anne's 
earlier  day.  But  in  what  we  have  let  us 
not  deface  any  page  with  misogynous 
phrase  and  sentence — jeers  or  expres- 
sion of  evil  against  one-half  of  humanity. 
Unsympathetic  words  about  women  who 
by  some  individual  fortune  have  become 
literary  drudges  fit  ill  American  lips — 
which  should  sing  the  nobility  of  any 
work  that  truly  helps  our  kind.  These 
women  go  about  in  wind  and  rain ;  they 
sit  in  the  foul  air  of  offices;  they  over- 
come repugnance  to  coarse  and  familiar 
address;  they  sometimes  stint  their 
food;  they  are  at  all  times  practising  a 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  209 

close  economy;  with  aching  flesh  and 
nerves  they  often  draw  their  Saturday 
evening  stipend.  They  are  of  the  sanest 
and  most  human  of  our  kind — laborers 
daily  for  their  meed  of  wage,  knowing 
the  sweetness  of  bread  well  earned,  of 
work  well  done,  and  rest  well  won. 

Even  from  the  discard  view  of  a  veri- 
table hater  of  their  sex  they  have  a  vast 
educational  influence  in  the  world  at 
large,  whether  their  work  is  ''authori- 
tative" or  ''unauthoritative,''  according 
to  pronunciamento  of  some  one  who  as- 
sumes authority  to  call  them  ' '  unauthor- 
itative." It  must  not  be  forgotten — to 
repeat  for  clearness'  sake — that  men 
laboring  in  these  very  duties  met  and 
disputed  every  step  the  women  took 
even  in  "unauthoritative"  work,  using 
ridicule,  caste  distinction,  and  all  the 
means  of  intimidation  which  a  power 
long  dominant  naturally  possesses.  To 
work  for  lower  wages  alone  allowed  the 
women  to  gain  employment. 

14 


210  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

**  You  harshly  blame  my  strengthless- 
ness  and  the  woman-delicacy  of  my 
body,"  exclaims  the  Antigone  of  Euripi- 
des, according  to  another  citation  of  the 
^^Florilegium,"  of  Stobseus  named  at 
the  beginning,  ^*but  if  I  am  of  under- 
standing mind — that  is  better  than  a 
strong  arm. '  * 

Defendants  whose  case  would  other- 
wise go  by  default  need  this  brief  plea, 
which  their  own  modesty  forbids  their 
uttering,  their  modesty,  their  busy  hands 
and  heads,  and  their  Antigone-like  love 
and  dtreiveta.  They  know  sympathy  is 
really  as  large  as  the  world,  and  that 
room  is  here  for  other  women  than 
those  who  make  dictionaries  at  so  much 
a  mile  as  well  as  for  themselves;  and 
for  other  men  than  neurotic  caterwaul- 
ers  and  hysterical  shriekers  like  our  an- 
cient friend  Knox,  assuming  that  the 
masculine  is  the  only  form  of  expres- 
sion, that  women  have  no  right  to  utter 
the  human  voice,  and  that  certain  men 


UP-TO-DATE   MISOGYNY  211 

have  up  wire  connections  with  om- 
niscient knowledge  and  Nature's  de- 
signs and  God's  will,  and,  standing 
on  this  pretence,  are  the  dispensers  of 
authority. 

*'If  the  greatest  poems  have  not  been 
written  by  women, ' '  said  our  Edgar  Poe, 
with  a  clearer  accent  of  the  American 
spirit  toward  women,  **it  is  because,  as 
yet,  the  greatest  poems  have  not  been 
written  at  all/'  The  measure  is  large 
between  the  purple-faced  zeal  of  John 
Knox  and  the  vivid  atavism  of  our 
brilliant  professor  and  that  luminous 
vision  of  Poe. 


THE    GULLET    SCIENCE' 

A   LOOK    BACK   AND   AN 
ECONOMIC    FORECAST 


Cookery  is  become  an  art,  a  noble  science ;  cooks 
are  gentlemen. 

Egbert  Burton 

Sir  Anthony  Absolute. — It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at,  ma'am — all  this  is  the  natural  consequence  of 
teaching  girls  to  read.  Had  I  a  thousand  daughters, 
by  Heaven  !  I'd  as  soon  have  them  taught  the  black 
art  as  their  alphabet ! 

KiCHARD    BrINSLEY    ShERIDAN 


"THE    GULLET    SCIENCE'' 

A   LOOK    BACK  AND   AN   ECONOMIC 
FORECAST 

The  cook-book  is  not  a  modern  prod- 
uct. The  Iliad  is  the  hungriest  book  on 
earth,  and  it  is  the  first  of  our  cook- 
books aside  from  half-sacred,  half-sani- 
tary directions  to  the  early  Aryans  and 
Jews.  It  is  that  acme  of  poetry,  that 
most  picturesque  of  pictures,  that  most 
historical  of  histories,  that  most  musical 
and  delicious  verse,  the  Iliad,  which  was 
the  first  popularly  to  teach  the  cooking 
art — the  art  in  its  simplicity,  and  not  a 
mere  handmaid  to  sanitation,  jurispru- 
dence, or  theology.  Through  the  pages 
of  that  great  poem  blow  not  only  the 
salt  winds  of  the  ^gean  Sea,  but  also 
the  savor  of  tender  kid  and  succulent 
pig,  not  to  mention  whole  hectacombs, 

215 


216  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

which  delighted  the  blessed  gods  above 
and  strengthened  hungry  heroes  below. 
To  this  very  day — its  realism  is  so  per- 
fect— we  catch  the  scent  of  the  cooking 
and  see  the  appetiteful  people  eat.  The 
book  is  half -human,  half -divine;  and  in 
its  human  part  the  pleasures  and  the 
economic  values  of  wholesome  fare  are 
not  left  out. 

No,  cook-books  are  not  modern  prod- 
ucts. They  were  in  Greece  later  than 
Homer.  When  the  Greek  states  came  to 
the  fore  in  their  wonderful  art  and  lit- 
erature and  the  distinction  of  a  free 
democracy,  plain  living  characterized 
nearly  all  the  peoples.  The  Athenians 
were  noted  for  their  simple  diet.  The 
Spartans  were  temperate  to  a  proverb, 
and  their  (Toaffina  (public  meals),  later 
called  fsidirca  (spare  meals),  guarded 
against  indulgence  in  eating.  To  be  a 
good  cook  was  to  be  banished  from 
Sparta. 

But   with   the   Western   Greeks,    the 


"THE  GULLET  SCIENCE''  217 

Greeks  of  Sicily  and  Southern  Italy,  it 
was  different — those  people  who  left 
behind  them  little  record  of  the  spirit. 
In  Sybaris  the  cook  who  distinguished 
himself  in  preparing  a  public  feast — 
such  festivals  being  not  uncommon — re- 
ceived a  crown  of  gold  and  the  freedom 
of  the  games.  It  was  a  citizen  of  that 
luxury-loving  town  who  averred,  when 
he  tasted  the  famous  black  soup,  that  it 
was  no  longer  a  wonder  the  Spartans 
were  fearless  in  battle,  for  any  one 
would  readily  die  rather  than  live  on 
such  a  diet.  Among  the  later  Greeks  the 
best  cooks,  and  the  best-paid  cooks,  came 
from  Sicily;  and  that  little  island  grew 
in  fame  for  its  gluttons. 

There  is  a  Greek  book — the  Deipnoso- 
phistse — Supper  of  the  Wise  Men — 
written  by  Athenseus — which  holds  for 
us  much  information  about  the  food  and 
feasting  of  those  old  Hellenes.  The  wise 
men  at  their  supposed  banquet  quote, 
touching  food  and  cooking,  from  count- 


218  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

less  Greek  authors  whose  works  are  now 
lost,  but  were  still  preserved  in  the  time 
of  AthenaBus.  This,  for  instance,  is  from 
a  poem  by  Philoxenus  of  Cythera,  who 
wittily  and  gluttonously  lived  at  the 
court  of  Dionysius  of  Syracuse,  and 
wished  for  a  throat  three  cubits  long 
that  the  delight  of  tasting  might  be 
drawn  out.* 

"And  then  two  slaves  brought  in  a  well-rubb'd 

table. 

....  Then  came  a  platter 
....  with  dainty  sword-fish  fraught, 
And  then  fat  cuttle-fish,  and  the  savoury  tribes 
Of  the  long  hairy  polypus.    After  this 
Another  orb  appeared  upon  the  table, 
Rival  of  that  just  brought  from  off  the  fire. 
Fragrant  with  spicy  odour.    And  on  that 
Again  were  famous  cuttle-fish,  and  those 
Fair    maids    the    honey' d    squills,    and    dainty 

cakes. 
Sweet  to  the  palate,  and  large  buns  of  wheat, 
Large  as  a  partridge,  sweet  and  round,  which 

you 

*  The  translation  is  that  of  C.  D.  Yonge. 


"THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  219 

Do  know  the  taste  of  well.    And  if  you  ask 
What   more   was   there,   I'd   speak   of   luscious 

chine, 
And  loin  of  pork,  and  head  of  boar,  all  hot; 
Cutlets  of  kid,  and  well-boiFd  pettitoes. 
And  ribs  of  beef,  and  heads,  and  snouts  and 

tails, 
Then    kid    again,    and    lamb,    and    hares,    and 

poultry, 
Partridges  and  the  bird  from  Phasis'  stream. 
And  golden  honey,  and  clotted  cream  was  there. 
And  cheese  which  I  did  join  with  all  in  calling 
Most  tender  fare." 

The  Greeks  used  many  of  the  meats 
and  vegetables  we  enjoy ;  and  others  we 
disclaim;  for  instance,  cranes.  Even 
mushrooms  were  known  to  their  cooks, 
and  AthenaBus  suggests  how  the  whole- 
some may  be  distinguished  from  the 
poisonous,  and  what  antidotes  serve  best 
in  case  the  bad  are  eaten.  But  with 
further  directions  of  his  our  tastes 
would  not  agree.  He  recommends  sea- 
soning the  mushrooms  with  vinegar,  or 
honey  and  vinegar,  or  honey,  or  salt 


220  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

— for    by    these    means    their    choking 
properties  are  taken  away. 

The  writings  of  Athenaeus  have,  how- 
ever, a  certain  literary  and,  for  his  time 
as  well  as  our  own,  an  historic  and  ar- 
chaBologic  flavor.  The  only  ancient  cook- 
book pure  and  simple — bent  on  instruc- 
tion in  the  excellent  art — which  has  come 
down  to  us  is  that  of  Apicius,  in  ten 
short  books,  or  chapters.  And  which 
Apicius?  Probably  the  second  of  the 
name,  the  one  who  lectured  on  cooking 
in  Eome  during  the  reign  of  Augustus. 
He  gave  some  very  simple  directions 
which  hold  good  to  the  present  day ;  for 
instance — 

**UT   CAKNEM   SALSAM   DULCEM   FACIAS 

**Carnem  salsam  dulcem  facies,  si 
prius  in  lacte  coquas,  et  postea  in  aqua.'' 

But  again  his  compounds  are  nau- 
seating even  in  print.  He  was  famous 
for  many  dishes,  and  Pliny,  in  his  Natu- 
ral History,  says  he  discovered  the  way 


"THE   GULLET  SCIENCE"  221 

of  increasing  the  size  of  the  liver  of  the 
pig — just  as  the  liver  of  the  Strasbourg 
geese  is  enlarged  for  pate  de  foie  gras, 
and  as  our  own  Southern  people  used 
to  induce  pathological  conditions  in  their 
turkeys. 

The  method  of  Apicius  was  to  cram 
the  pig  with  dried  figs,  and,  when  it  was 
fat  enough,  drench  it  with  win,e  mixed 
with  honey.  ^^ There  is,''  continues 
Pliny,  ^^no  other  animal  that  affords  so 
great  a  variety  to  the  palate ;  all  others 
have  their  taste,  but  the  pig  fifty  differ- 
ent flavors.  From  this  tastiness  of  the 
meat  it  came  about  that  the  censors 
made  whole  pages  of  regulations  about 
serving  at  banquets  the  belly  and  the 
jowls  and  other  dainty  parts.  But  in 
spite  of  their  rules  the  poet  Publius, 
author  of  the  Mimes,  when  he  ceased  to 
be  a  slave,  is  said  never  to  have  given 
an  entertainment  without  a  dish  of  pig's 
belly  which  he  called  ^  sumen. '  ' ' 

*^Cook  Apicius  showed  a  remarkable 


222  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

ingenuity  in  developing  luxury/'  the 
old  Eoman  says  at  another  time,  ^'and 
thought  it  a  most  excellent  plan  to  let 
a  mullet  die  in  the  pickle  known  as 
*garum.'  "  It  was  ingenuity  of  cruelty 
as  well  as  of  luxury.  ^^They  killed  the 
fish  in  sauces  and  pickled  them  alive  at 
the  banquet, ' '  says  Seneca,  ^  ^  feeding  the 
eye  before  the  gullet,  for  they  took  pleas- 
ure in  seeing  their  mullets  change  sev- 
eral colors  while  dying/*  The  unthink- 
able garum  was  made,  according  to 
Pliny,  from  the  intestines  of  fish  mac- 
erated with  salt,  and  other  ingredients 
were  added  before  the  mixture  was  set 
in  the  sun  to  putrefy  and  came  to  the 
right  point  for  serving.  It  also  had 
popularity  as  a  household  remedy  for 
dog-bites,  etc. ;  and  in  burns,  when  care 
was  necessary  in  its  application  not  to 
mention  it  by  name — so  delicately  timid 
was  its  healing  spirit.  Its  use  as  a  dish 
was  widespread,  and  perhaps  we  see  in 
the  well-known  hankerings  of  the  royal 


*'THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  223 

George  of  England  a  reversion  to  the 
palate  of  Italian  ancestors. 

But  garum  was  only  one  of  strange 
dishes.  The  Eomans  seasoned  much 
with  rue  and  asaf etida ! — a  taste  kept  to 
this  day  in  India,  where  *'Kim''  eats 
•'good  curry  cakes  all  warm  and  well- 
scented  with  hing  (asafetida).''  Cab- 
bages they  highly  estimated;  '*of  all 
garden  vegetables  they  thought  them 
best,"  says  Pliny.  The  same  author 
notes  that  Apicius  rejected  Brussels 
sprouts,  and  in  this  was  followed  by 
Drusus  Caesar,  who  was  censured  for 
over-nicety  by  his  father,  the  Emperor 
Tiberius  of  CapreaB  villas  fame. 

Upon  cooks  and  the  Roman  estimate 
of  their  value  in  his  day  Pliny  also  casts 
light.  '^Asinius  Celer,  a  man  of  con- 
sular rank  and  noted  for  his  expenditure 
on  mullet,  bought  one  at  Eome  during 
the  reign  of  Gains  Caligula  for  eight 
thousand  sesterces.  Reflection  on  this 
fact,''  continues  Pliny,  '^will  recall  the 


224  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

complaints  uttered  against  luxury  and 
the  lament  that  a  single  cook  costs  more 
than  a  horse.  At  the  present  day  a  cook 
is  only  to  be  had  for  the  price  of  a 
triumph,  and  a  mullet  only  to  be  had  for 
what  was  once  the  price  of  a  cook!  Of 
a  fact  there  is  now  hardly  any  living 
being  held  in  higher  esteem  than  the  man 
who  knows  how  to  get  rid  of  his  mas- 
ter's belongings  in  the  most  scientific 
fashion ! ' ' 

Much  has  been  written  of  the  luxury 
and  enervation  of  Romans  after  the  re- 
public, how  they  feasted  scented  with 
perfumes,  reclining  and  listening  to 
music,  ^'nudis  puellis  ministrantibus. " 
The  story  is  old  of  how  Vedius  PoUio 
**hung  with  ecstasy  over  lampreys  fat- 
tened on  human  flesh;''  how  Tiberius 
spent  two  days  and  two  nights  in  one 
bout ;  how  Claudius  dissolved  pearls  for 
his  food ;  how  Vitellius  delighted  in  the 
brains  of  pheasants  and  tongues  of 
nightingales  and  the  roe  of  fish  difficult 


*'THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  225 

to  take;  how  the  favorite  supper  of 
Heliogabalus  was  the  brains  of  six  hun- 
dred thrushes.  At  the  time  these  glut- 
tonies went  on  in  the  houses  of  govern- 
ment officials,  the  mass  of  the  people,  the 
great  workers  who  supported  the  great 
idlers,  fed  healthfully  on  a  mess  of  pot- 
tage. The  many  to  support  the  super- 
abundant luxury  of  a  few  is  still  one  of 
the  mysteries  of  the  people. 

But  in  the  old  Rome  the  law  of  right 
and  honest  strength  at  last  prevailed, 
and  monsters  gave  way  to  the  cleaner 
and  hardier  chiefs  of  the  north.  The 
mastery  of  the  world  necessarily  passed 
to  others ; — it  has  never  lain  with  slaves 
of  the  stomach. 

The  early  folk  of  Britain — those  Cae- 
sar found  in  the  land  from  which  we 
sprang — ate  the  milk  and  flesh  of  their 
flocks.  They  made  bread  by  picking  the 
grains  from  the  ear  and  pounding  them 
to  paste  in  a  mortar.  Their  Eoman  con- 
querors doubtless  brought  to  their  midst 

15 


OF   THE 

UMIVERSITY 

Of 


226  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

a  more  elaborated  table  order.  Bar- 
barous Saxons,  fighters  and  freebooters, 
next  settling  on  the  rich  island  and  re- 
straining themselves  little  for  sowing 
and  reaping,  must  in  their  incursions 
have  been  flesh-eaters,  expeditiously 
roasting  and  broiling  directly  over  coals 
like  our  early  pioneers. 

This  mode  of  living  also  would  seem 
true  of  the  later-coming  Danes,  who 
after  their  settlement  introduced,  says 
Holinshed,  another  habit.  ^  ^  The  Danes, ' ' 
says  that  delightful  chronicler,  ^^had 
their  dwelling  .  .  .  among  the  English- 
men, whereby  came  great  harme;  for 
whereas  the  Danes  by  nature  were  great 
drinkers,  the  Englishmen  by  continuall 
conversation  with  them  learned  the  same 
vice.  King  Edgar,  to  reforme  in  part 
such  excessive  quaffing  as  then  began  to 
grow  in  use,  caused  by  the  procurement 
of  Dunstane  [the  then  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury]  nailes  to  be  set  in  cups  of 
a  certeine  measure,  marked  for  the  pur- 


''THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  227 

pose,  that  none  should  drinke  more  than 
was  assigned  by  such  measured  cups. 
Englishmen  also  learned  of  the  Saxons, 
Flemings,  and  other  strangers,  their 
peculiar  kinds  of  vices,  as  of  the  Sax- 
ons a  disordered  fierceness  of  mind, 
of  the  Flemings  a  feeble  tendernesse 
of  bodie;  where  before  they  rejoiced 
in  their  owne  simplicitie  and  esteemed 
not  the  lewd  and  unprofitable  manners 
of  strangers. '* 

But  refinement  was  growing  in  the 
mixture  of  races  which  was  to  make  mod- 
ern Englishmen,  and  in  the  time  of  Har- 
dicanute,  much  given  to  the  pleasures 
of  the  table  and  at  last  dying  from  too 
copious  a  draught  of  wine, — ^*he  fell 
downe  suddenlie,''  says  Holinshed, 
*^with  the  pot  in  his  hand'' — there  was 
aim  at  niceness  and  variety  and  hos- 
pitable cheer. 

The  Black  Book  of  a  royal  house- 
hold which  Warner  quotes  in  his  ^^An- 


228  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

tiquitates   CTilinariae"  *   is   evidence   of 
this: 

^^Donrns  Regis  Hardeknoute  may  be 
called  a  fader  noreshoure  of  f amiliaritie, 
which  used  for  his  own  table,  never  to 
be  served  with  ony  like  metes  of  one 
meale  in  another,  and  that  chaunge  and 
diversitie  was  dayly  in  greate  habun- 
dance,  and  that  same  after  to  be  min- 
istred  to  his  alms-dishe,  he  caused 
cunyng  cooks  in  curiositie ;  also,  he  was 
the  furst  that  began  four  meales  stab- 
lyshed  in  oon  day,  opynly  to  be  holden 
for  worshuppfull  and  honest  peopnll  re- 

*  The  ancient  classic  and  early  English  writers 
afforded  many  instances  of  their  people's  culinaria, 
and  only  when  their  content  became  familiar  did 
I  find  that  the  Rev.  Richard  Warner  had,  in  the 
last  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  gone  over  the 
ground  and  chosen  like  examples — perhaps  because 
they  were  the  best.  This  quotation,  and  another 
one  or  two  following,  are  solely  found  in  our 
libraries  in  his  admirable  book  here  cited.  Master 
Warner,  writing  nearer  the  old  sources,  had  the 
advantage  of  original  manuscripts  and  collections. 


"THE   GULLET  SCIENCE"  229 

sorting  to  his  courte ;  and  no  more  melis, 
nor  brekefast,  nor  chambyr,  but  for  his 
children  in  honseholde;  for  which  four 
melys  he  ordeyned  four  marshalls,  to 
kepe  the  honor  of  his  halle  in  recevyng 
and  dyrecting  strangers,  as  well  as  of 
his  householdemen  in  theyre  fitting,  and 
for  services  and  ther  precepts  to  be 
obeyd  in.  And  for  the  halle,  with  all 
diligence  of  officers  thereto  assigned 
from  his  furst  inception,  tyll  the  day  of 
his  dethe,  his  house  stode  after  one  uny- 
f  ormitie. ' ' 

Of  Hardicanute,  *4t  hath,''  says 
Holinshed,  ^^beene  commonlie  told,  that 
Englishmen  learned  of  him  their  exces- 
sive gourmandizing  and  unmeasurable 
filling  of  their  panches  with  meates  and 
drinkes,  whereby  they  forgat  the  ver- 
tuous  use  of  sobrietie,  so  much  neces- 
sarie  to  all  estates  and  degrees,  so  profit- 
able for  all  commonwealthes,  and  so 
commendable  both  in  the  sight  of  God, 
and  all  good  men." 


230  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Not  only  to  the  Danes,  but  also  to  the 
later  conquerors,  the  Normans,  the  old 
chronicler  attributes  corruption  of  early 
English  frugality  and  simplicity.  *^The 
Normans,  misliking  the  gormandise  of 
Canutus,  ordeined  after  their  arrivall 
that  no  table  should  be  covered  above 
once  in  the  day.  .  .  .  But  in  the  end, 
either  waxing  wearie  of  their  owne  fru- 
galitie  or  suffering  the  cockle  of  old 
custome  to  overgrow  the  good  corne  of 
their  new  constitution,  they  fell  to  such 
libertie  that  in  often  feeding  they  sur- 
mounted Canutus  surnamed  the  bardie. 
.  .  .  They  brought  in  also  the  custome 
of  long  and  statelie  sitting  at  meat. ' ' 

A  fellow-Londoner  with  Holinshed, 
John  Stow,  says  of  the  reign  of  William 
Eufus,  the  second  Norman  king  of  Eng- 
land, ^^The  courtiers  devoured  the  sub- 
stance of  the  husbandmen,  their  ten- 
ants.'' 

And  Stow's  ^^Annales''  still  further 
tell  of  a  banquet  served  in  far-off  Italy 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE''  231 

to  the  duke  of  Clarence,  son  of  Edward 
III.,  when,  some  three  hundred  years 
after  the  Norman  settlement,  the  lad 
Leonell  went  to  marry  Violentis,  daugh- 
ter of  the  duke  of  Milan.  It  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
II.  of  England,  grandfather  of  the  duke, 
proclamation  had  been  issued  against 
the  *^  outrageous  and  excessive  multi- 
tude of  meats  and  dishes ' '  served  by  the 
nobles  in  their  castles,  as  well  by  ^^  per- 
sons of  inferior  rank  imitating  their  ex- 
ample, beyond  what  their  station  re- 
quired and  their  circumstances  could 
afford. '^ 

^^At  the  comming  of  Leonell,"  says 
Stow,  ^^such  aboundance  of  treasure 
was  in  most  bounteous  maner  spent,  in 
making  most  sumptuous  feasts,  setting 
forth  stately  fightes,  and  honouring  with 
rare  gifts  above  two  hundred  English- 
men, which  accompanied  his  [the  duke 
of  Milan's]  son-in-law,  as  it  seemed  to 
surpasse  the  greatnesse  of  most  wealthy 


232  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

Princes ;  for  in  the  banquet  whereat 
Francis  Petrarch  was  present,  amongst 
the  chiefest  guestes,  there  were  above 
thirtie  courses  of  service  at  the  table, 
and  betwixt  every  course,  as  many  pres- 
ents of  wonderous  price  intermixed,  all 
which  John  Galeasius,  chiefe  of  the 
choice  youth,  bringing  to  the  table,  did 
offer  to  Leonell  .  .  .  And  such  was  the 
sumptuousnesse  of  that  banquet,  that 
the  meats  which  were  brought  from  the 
table,  would  sufficiently  have  served  ten 
thousand  men." 

The  first  cook-book  we  have  in  our 
ample  English  tongue  is  of  date  about 
1390.  Its  forme,  says  the  preface  to  the 
table  of  contents,  this  ''forme  of  cury 
[cookery]  was  compiled  of  the  chef 
maistes  cokes  of  kyng  Eichard  the  Sec- 
unde  kyng  of  nglond  af tir  the  conquest ; 
the  which  was  accounted  the  best  and 
ryallest  vyand  [nice  eater]  of  alle  csten 
ynges  [Christian  kings] ;  and  it  was 
compiled  by  assent  and  avysement  of 


"THE  GULLET   SCIENCE"  233 

maisters  and  [of]  phisik  and  of  philoso- 
phie  that  dwellid  in  his  court.  First  it 
techith  a  man  for  to  make  commune 
pottages  and  commune  meetis  for  hows- 
hold,  as  they  shold  be  made,  craftly  and 
holsomly.  Aftirward  it  techith  for  to 
make  curious  potages,  and  meetes,  and 
sotiltees,  for  alle  maner  of  states,  bothe 
hye  and  lowe.  And  the  techyng  of  the 
forme  of  making  of  potages,  and  of 
meetes,  bothe  of  flesh,  and  of  fissh,  buth 
[are]  y  sette  here  by  noumbre  and  by 
ordre.  Sso  this  little  table  here,  fewyng 
[following]  wole  teche  a  man  with  oute 
taryyng,  to  fynde  what  meete  that  hym 
lust  for  to  have. ' ' 

The  '^ potages'^  and  ** meetis''  and 
*' sotiltees''  it  techith  a  man  for  to  make 
would  be  hardly  more  endurable  to  the 
modern  stomach  than  some  old  Greek 
and  Boman  seasonings  we  have  referred 
to.  There  is  no  essential  difference 
between  these  and  the  directions  of  a 
rival  cook-book  written  some  forty  or 


234  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

fifty  years  later  and  divided  into  three 
parts — Kalendare  de  Potages  dyvers, 
Kalendare  de  Leche  Metys,  Dyverse  bake 
metis.  Or  of  another  compiled  about 
1450.  Let  us  see  how  they  would  make 
a  meat. 

^^Stwed  Beeff.  Take  faire  Eibbes  of 
ffresh  beef,  And  (if  thou  wilt)  roste  hit 
til  hit  be  nygh  ynowe;  then  put  hit  in 
a  faire  possenet;  caste  therto  parcely 
and  oynons  mynced,  reysons  of  corauns, 
powder  peper,  canel,  clowes,  saundres, 
safferon,  and  salt;  then  caste  thereto 
wyn  and  a  litull  vynegre;  sette  a  1yd 
on  the  potte,  and  lete  hit  boile  sokingly 
on  a  faire  charcole  til  hit  be  ynogh ;  then 
lay  the  fflessh,  in  disshes,  and  the  sirippe 
thereuppon,  And  serve  it  forth.'' 
And  for  sweet  apple  fritters : 
^^Freetours.  Take  yolkes  of  egges, 
drawe  hem  thorgh  a  streynour,  caste 
thereto  faire  floure,  berme  and  ale; 
stere  it  togidre  till  hit  be  thik.  Take 
pared  appelles,  cut  hem  thyn  like  obleies 


"THE   GULLET  SCIENCE"  235 

[wafers  of  the  eucharist],  ley  hem  in  the 
batur ;  then  put  hem  into  a  if rying  pan, 
and  fry  hem  in  faire  grece  or  buttur  til 
thei  ben  browne  yelowe;  then  put  hem 
in  disshes;  and  strawe  Sugur  on  hem 
ynogh,  And  serve  hem  forthe.'' 

Still  other  cook-books  followed — the 
men  of  that  day  served  hem  forthe — 
among  which  we  notice  **A  noble  Boke 
off  Cookry  ffor  a  prynce  houssolde  or 
eny  other  estately  houssolde/'  ascribed 
to  about  the  year  1465. 

To  the  monasteries  the  art  of  cooking 
is  doubtless  much  indebted,  just  as  even 
at  the  present  day  is  the  art  of  making 
liqueurs.  Their  vast  wealth,  the  leisure 
of  the  in-dwellers,  and  the  gross  sensual- 
ism and  materialism  of  the  time  they 
were  at  their  height  would  naturally  lead 
to  care  for  the  table  and  its  viands. 
Within  their  thick  stone  walls,  which 
the  religious  devotion  of  the  populace 
had  reared,  the  master  of  the  kitchen, 
magister    coquinae   or   magnus    coquus. 


236  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

was  not  the  man  of  least  importance. 
Some  old  author  whose  name  and  book 
do  not  come  promptly  to  memory  refers 
to  the  disinclination  of  plump  capons, 
or  round-breasted  duck,  to  meet  eccle- 
siastical eyes — a  facetiousness  repeated 
in  our  day  when  the  Uncle  Remuses 
of  Dixie  say  they  see  yellow-legged 
chickens  run  and  hide  if  a  preacher 
drives  up  to  supper. 

Moreover,  the  monasteries  were  the 
inns  of  that  day  where  travellers  put 
up,  and  in  many  instances  were  served 
free — ^no  price,  that  is,  was  put  upon 
their  entertainment,  the  abbot,  or  the 
establishment,  receiving  whatever  gift 
the  one  sheltered  and  fed  felt  able  or 
moved  to  pay. 

Contemporary  accounts  of,  or  refer- 
ences to,  the  cooking  and  feasting  in 
religious  houses  are  many — those  of  the 
Vision  of  Long  Will  concerning  Piers 
the  Plowman,  those  of  ^^Dan  Chaucer, 
the  first  warbler,''  of  Alexander  Bar- 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  237 

clay,  and  Skelton,  great  satirist  of  times 
of  Henry  VIII.,  and  of  other  authors 
not  so  well  remembered.  Now  and  then 
a  racy  anecdote  has  come  down  like  that 
which  Thomas  Fuller  saves  from  lip  tra- 
dition in  his  ^^  History  of  Abbeys  in 
England."  It  happened,  says  Worthy 
Fuller,  that  Harry  VIIL,  ''hunting  in 
Windsor  Forest,  either  casually  lost,  or 
(more  probable)  wilfully  losing  himself, 
struck  down  about  dinner-time  to  the 
abbey  of  Reading;  where,  disguising 
himself  (much  for  delight,  more  for  dis- 
covery, to  see  unseen),  he  was  invited 
to  the  abbot's  table,  and  passed  for  one 
of  the  king's  guard,  a  place  to  which  the 
proportion  of  his  person  might  properly 
entitle  him.  A  sirloin  of  beef  was  set 
before  him  (so  knighted  saith  tradition, 
by  this  King  Henry),  on  which  the  king 
laid  on  lustily,  not  disgracing  one  of  that 
place  for  whom  he  was  mistaken. 

''  'Well   fare   thy  heart!'   quoth   the 
abbot;  'and  here  in  a  cup  of  sack  I  re- 


238  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

member  the  health  of  his  grace  your 
master.  I  would  give  an  hundred 
pounds  on  the  condition  I  could  feed  so 
heartily  on  beef  as  you  do.  Alas!  my 
weak  and  squeazy  stomach  will  badly 
digest  the  wing  of  a  small  rabbit  or 
chicken. ' 

^^The  king  pleasantly  pledged  him, 
and,  heartily  thanking  him  for  his  good 
cheer,  after  dinner  departed  as  undis- 
covered as  he  came  thither. 

**  Some  weeks  after,  the  abbot  was  sent 
for  by  a  pursuivant,  brought  up  to  Lon- 
don, clapped  in  the  Tower,  kept  close 
prisoner,  fed  for  a  short  time  with  bread 
and  water ;  yet  not  so  empty  his  body  of 
food,  as  his  mind  was  filled  with  fears, 
creating  many  suspicions  to  himself 
when  and  how  he  had  incurred  the 
king's  displeasure.  At  last  a  sirloin  of 
beef  was  set  before  him,  on  which  the 
abbot  fed  as  the  farmer  of  his  grange, 
and  verified  the  proverb,  that  ^Two 
hungry  meals  make  the  third  a  glutton/ 


**THE  GULLET   SCIENCE"  239 

**In  springs  King  Henry  out  of  a  pri- 
vate lobby,  where  he  had  placed  himself, 
the  invisible  spectator  of  the  abbot's 
behavior.  ^My  lord,'  quoth  the  king, 
^presently  deposit  your  hundred  pounds 
in  gold,  or  else  no  going  hence  all  the 
days  of  your  life.  I  have  been  your 
physician  to  cure  you  of  your  squeazy 
stomach;  and  here,  as  I  deserve,  I  de- 
mand my  fee  for  the  same ! ' 

^ '  The  abbot  down  with  his  dust ;  and, 
glad  he  had  escaped  so,  returned  to 
Eeading,  as  somewhat  lighter  in  purse, 
so  much  more  merrier  in  heart  than 
when  he  came  thence. ' ' 

The  ^'squeazy"  abbot  stood  alone  in 
proclamation  of  his  disorder.  Arch- 
bishop Cranmer,  according  to  John 
Leland,  king's  antiquary  to  Henry 
VIII.,  found  it  necessary  in  1541  to  regu- 
late the  expenses  of  the  tables  of  bishops 
and  clergy  by  a  constitution — an  instru- 
ment which  throws  much  light  on  the 
then  conditions,  and  which  ran  as  fol- 
lows : 


240  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

**In  the  yeare  of  our  Lord  MDXLI 
it  was  agreed  and  condescended  upon, 
as  wel  by  the  common  consent  of  both 
tharchbishops  and  most  part  of  the 
bishops  within  this  realme  of  Englande, 
as  also  of  divers  grave  men  at  that  tyme, 
both  deanes  and  archdeacons,  the  fare 
at  their  tables  to  be  thus  moderated. 

'*  First,  that  tharchbishop  should 
never  exceede  six  divers  kindes  of  fleshe, 
or  six  of  fishe,  on  the  fishe  days;  the 
bishop  not  to  exceede  five,  the  deane  and 
archdeacon  not  above  four,  and  al  other 
under  that  degree  not  above  three ;  pro- 
vided also  that  tharchbishop  myght  have 
of  second  dishes  four,  the  bishop  three, 
and  al  others  under  the  degree  of  a 
bishop  but  two.  As  custard,  tart,  fritter, 
cheese  or  apples,  peares,  or  two  of  other 
kindes  of  fruites.  Provided  also,  that  if 
any  of  the  inferior  degree  dyd  receave 
at  their  table,  any  archbishop,  bishop, 
deane,  or  archdeacon,  or  any  of  the 
laitie  of  lyke  degree,  viz.  duke,  marques, 


*'THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  241 

earle,  viscount,  baron,  lorde,  knyght, 
they  myght  have  such  provision  as  were 
mete  and  requisite  for  their  degrees. 
Provided  alway  that  no  rate  was  limited 
in  the  receavying  of  any  ambassadour. 
It  was  also  provided  that  of  the  greater 
fyshes  or  f owles,  there  should  be  but  one 
in  a  dishe,  as  crane,  swan,  turkey  cocke, 
hadocke,  pyke,  tench ;  and  of  lesse  sortes 
but  two,  viz.  capons  two,  pheasantes 
two,  conies  two,  and  woodcockes  two. 
Of  lesse  sortes,  as  of  patriches,  the  arch- 
bishop three,  the  bishop  and  other  de- 
grees under  hym  two.  Of  blackburdes, 
the  archbishop  six,  the  bishop  four,  the 
other  degrees  three.  Of  larkes  and 
snytes  (snipes)  and  of  that  sort  but 
twelve.  It  was  also  provided,  that  what- 
soever is  spared  by  the  cutting  of,  of  the 
olde  superfluitie,  shoulde  yet  be  pro- 
vided and  spent  in  playne  meates  for  the 
relievyng  of  the  poore.  Memorandum, 
that  this  order  was  kept  for  two  or  three 
monethes,  tyll  by  the  disusyng  of  eer- 
ie 


242  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

taine  wylful  persons  it  came  to  the  olde 
excesse. ' ' 

Still  one  more  tale  bearing  upon  a 
member  of  the  clergy  who  would  set  out 
more  ^^blackburdes'^  than  ^Hharch- 
bishop''  is  told  by  Holinshed.  It  has 
within  it  somewhat  of  the  flavor  of  the 
odium  theologicum,  but  an  added  interest 
also,  since  it  turns  upon  a  dish  esteemed 
in  Italy  since  the  time  of  the  imperial 
Eomans — peacock,  often  served  even 
nowadays  encased  in  its  most  wonderful 
plumage.  The  Pope  Julius  III.,  whose 
luxurious  entertainment  and  comport 
shocked  the  proprieties  even  of  that  day, 
and  who  died  in  Rome  while  the  chroni- 
cler was  busy  in  London,  is  the  chief 
actor. 

'  *  At  an  other  time, '  *  writes  Holinshed, 
*^he  sitting  at  dinner,  pointing  to  a  pea- 
cocke  upon  his  table,  which  he  had  not 
touched;  Keepe  (said  he)  this  cold  pea- 
cocke  for  me  against  supper,  and  let  me 
sup   in   the   garden,    for   I   shall   have 


♦♦THE   GULLET  SCIENCE"  243 

ghests.  So  when  supper  came,  and 
amongst  other  hot  peacockes,  he  saw  not 
his  cold  peacocke  brought  to  his  table; 
the  pope  after  his  wonted  manner,  most 
horriblie  blaspheming  God,  fell  into  an 
extreame  rage,  &c.  Whereupon  one  of 
his  cardinals  sitting  by,  desired  him 
saieng:  Let  not  your  holinesse,  I  praie 
you,  be  so  mooved  with  a  matter  of  so 
small  weight.  Then  this  Julius  the  pope 
answeringe  againe:  What  (saith  he)  if 
God  was  so  angrie  for  one  apple,  that  he 
cast  our  first  parents  out  of  paradise 
for  the  same,  whie  maie  not  I  being  his 
vicar,  be  angrie  then  for  a  peacocke, 
sithens  a  peacocke  is  a  greater  matter 
than  an  apple.'' 

In  England  at  this  tiiiie  controlling 
the  laity  were  sumptuary  laws,  habits  of 
living  resulting  from  those  laws,  and 
great  inequalities  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth.  On  these  points  Holinshed 
again  brings  us  light: 

**In  number  of  dishes  and  change  of 


244  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

meat,"  he  writes,  ^Hhe  nobilitie  of  Eng- 
land (whose  cookes  are  for  the  most 
part  musicall-headed  Frenchmen  and 
strangers)  do  most  exceed,  sith  there  is 
no  daie  in  maner  that  passeth  over  their 
heads,  wherein  they  have  not  onelie 
beefe,  mutton,  veale,  lambe,  kid,  porke, 
conie,  capon,  pig,  or  so  manie  of  these 
as  the  season  yeeldeth;  but  also  some 
portion  of  the  red  or  fallow  deere,  be- 
side great  varietie  of  fish  and  wild  f  oule, 
and  thereto  snndrie  other  delicates 
wherein  the  sweet  hand  of  the  seasoning 
Portingale  is  not  wanting ;  so  that  for  a 
man  to  dine  with  one  of  them,  and  to 
taste  of  everie  dish  that  standeth  before 
him  ...  is  rather  to  yeeld  unto  a  con- 
spiracie  with  a  great  deale  of  meat  for 
the  speedie  suppression  of  naturall 
health,  then  the  use  of  a  necessarie 
meane  to  satisfie  himselfe  with  a  compe- 
tent repast,  to  susteine  his  bodie  withall. 
But  as  this  large  feeding  is  not  scene 
in  their  gests,  no  more  is  it  in  their  owne 


"THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  245 

persons,  for  sith  they  have  dailie  much 
resort  unto  their  tables  .  .  .  and  thereto 
reteine  great  numbers  of  servants,  it  is 
verie  requisit  and  expedient  for  them  to 
be  somewhat  plentifull  in  this  behalf e. 

^^The  chief e  part  likewise  of  their 
dailie  provision  is  brought  before  them 
.  .  .  and  placed  on  their  tables,  whereof 
when  they  have  taken  what  it  pleaseth 
them,  the  rest  is  reserved  and  after- 
wards sent  downe  to  their  serving  men 
and  waiters,  who  feed  thereon  in  like 
sort  with  convenient  moderation,  their 
reversion  also  being  bestowed  upon  the 
poore,  which  lie  readie  at  their  gates  in 
great  numbers  to  receive  the  same. 

*  *  The  gentlemen  and  merchants  keepe 
much  about  one  rate,  and  each  of  them 
contenteth  himselfe  with  foure,  five  or 
six  dishes,  when  they  have  but  small  re- 
sort, or  peradventure  with  one,  or  two, 
or  three  at  the  most,  when  they  have  no 
strangers  to  accompanie  them  at  their 
tables.     And  yet   their   servants   have 


246  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

their  ordinarie  diet  assigned,  beside 
such  as  is  left  at  their  masters '  boordes, 
and  not  appointed  to  be  brought  thither 
the  second  time,  which  neverthelesse  is 
often  seene  generallie  in  venison,  lambe, 
or  some  especiall  dish,  whereon  the  mer- 
chant man  himselfe  liketh  to  feed  when 
it  is  cold.'^ 

^^At  such  times  as  the  merchants  doo 
make  their  ordinarie  or  voluntarie 
feasts,  it  is  a  world  to  see  what  great 
provision  is  made  of  all  maner  of  deli- 
cat  meats,  from  everie  quarter  of  the 
countrie.  .  .  .  They  will  seldome  regard 
anie  thing  that  the  butcher  usuallie  kill- 
eth,  but  reject  the  same  as  not  worthie 
to  come  in  place.  In  such  cases  all 
gelisses  of  all  coleurs  mixed  with  a 
varitie  in  the  representation  of  sundrie 
floures,  herbs,  trees,  formes  of  beasts, 
fish,  foules  and  fruits,  and  there  unto 
marchpaine  wrought  with  no  small  curi- 
ositie,  tarts  of  diverse  hewes  and  sundrie 
denominations,  conserves  of  old  fruits 


'♦THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  247 

foren  and  homebred,  suckets,  codinacs, 
marmilats,  marchpaine,  sugerbread,  gin- 
gerbread, florentines,  wild  foule,  venison 
of  all  sorts,  and  sundrie  outlandish  con- 
fections altogither  seasoned  with  sugar 
.  .  .  doo  generalie  beare  the  swaie,  beside 
injfinit  devises  of  our  owne  not  possible 
for  me  to  remember.  Of  the  potato  and 
such  venerous  roots  as  are  brought  out 
of  Spaine,  Portingale,  and  the  Indies  to 
furnish  our  bankets,  I  speake  not." 

^*The  artificer  and  husbandman  make 
greatest  accompt  of  such  meat  as  they 
may  soonest  come  by,  and  have  it  quick- 
liest  readie.  .  .  .  Their  food  also  con- 
sisteth  principallie  in  beefe  and  such 
meat  as  the  butcher  selleth,  that  is  to 
sale,  mutton,  veale,  lambe,  porke,  etc., 
.  .  .  beside  souse,  brawne,  bacon,  fruit, 
pies  of  fruit,  foules  of  sundrie  sorts, 
cheese,  butter,  eggs,  etc.  ...  To  con- 
clude, both  the  artificer  and  the  hus- 
bandman are  sufficientlie  liberall  and 
verie    friendlie    at    their    tables,    and 


248  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

when  they  meet  they  are  so  merie 
without  malice  and  plaine,  without  in- 
ward Italian  or  French  craft  and  sub- 
tiltie,  that  it  would  doo  a  man  good  to 
be  in  companie  among  them. 

''With  us  the  nobilitie,  gentrie  and 
students  doo  ordinarilie  go  to  dinner  at 
eleven  before  noone,  and  to  supper  at 
five,  or  betweene  five  and  six  at  after- 
noone.  The  merchants  dine  and  sup  sel- 
dome  before  twelve  at  noone,  and  six  at 
night,  especiallie  in  London.  The  hus- 
bandmen dine  also  at  high  noone  as  they 
call  it,  and  sup  at  seven  or  eight.  .  .  . 
As  for  the  poorest  sort  they  generallie 
dine  and  sup  when  they  may,  so  that  to 
talke  of  their  order  of  repast  it  were  but 
a  needlesse  matter. '^ 

''The  bread  through  out  the  land," 
continues  Holinshed,  "is  made  of  such 
graine  as  the  soil  yeeldeth,  neverthelesse 
the  gentilitie  commonlie  provide  them- 
selves  sufficientlie   of  wheat   for   their 


*'THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  249 

owne  tables,  whilst  their  houshold  and 
poore  neighbours  in  some  shires  are  in- 
forced  to  content  themselves  with  rie,  or 
baricie,  yea  and  in  time  of  dearth  manie 
with  bread  made  either  of  beans,  or  pea- 
son,  or  otes,  or  of  altogether  and  some 
acornes  among.  .  .  .  There  be  much 
more  ground  eared  now  almost  in  everie 
place  than  hath  beene  of  late  yeares,  yet 
such  a  price  of  corne  continueth  in  each 
towne  and  market  without  any  just 
cause  (except  it  be  that  landlords  doo 
get  licenses  to  carie  corne  out  of  the  land 
onelie  to  keepe  up  the  prices  for  their 
owne  private  gaines  and  mine  of  the 
commonwealth),  that  the  artificer  and 
poore  laboring  man  is  not  able  to  reach 
unto  it,  but  is  driven  to  content  himselfe 
with  horsse  corne — I  mean  beanes,  pea- 
son,  otes,  tarres,  and  lintels. ' ' 

Books  had  been  written  for  women 
and   their    tasks    within — the    ^'Babees 


250  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

Booke,"  Tusser's*  ' '  Hundrethe  Good 
Pointes  of  Huswifry/'  ^^The  Good 
Husive's  Handmaid '* — the  last  two  in 
the  sixteenth  century;  these  and  others 
of  their  kidney.  A  woman  who  thought, 
spoke,  and  wrote  in  several  tongues  was 
greatly  filling  the  throne  of  England  in 
those  later  times. 

Cook-  and  receipt-books  in  the  follow- 
ing century,  that  is  in  the  seventeenth, 
continued  to  discover  women,  and  to 
realize  moreover  that  to  them  division 
of  labor  had  delegated  the  household  and 
its  businesses.  There  were  ^^ Jewels'' 
and  ^^ Closets  of  Delights''  before  we 
find  an  odd  little  volume  putting  out  in 
1655  a  second  edition.  It  shows  upon 
its  title-page  the  survival  from  earlier 
conditions  of  the  confusion  of  duties  of 
physician  and  cook — a  fact  made  appar- 


Tusser,  they  tell  me,  when  thou  wert  alive, 
Thou,  teaching  thrift,  thyselfe  could'st  never 
thrive." 


"THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  251 

ent  in  the  preface  copied  in  the  fore- 
going ^' forme  of  cnry''  of  King  Richard 
— and  perhaps  intimates  the  housewife 
should  perform  the  services  of  both.  It 
makes,  as  well,  a  distinct  appeal  to 
women  as  readers  and  users  of  books. 
Again  it  evidences  the  growth  of  the 
Commons.  In  full  it  introduces  itself  in 
this  wise : 

**The  Ladies  Cabinet  enlarged  and 
opened:  containing  Many  Rare  Secrets 
and  Rich  Ornaments,  of  several  kindes, 
and  different  uses.  Comprized  under 
three  general  Heads,  viz.  of  1  Pre- 
serving, Conserving,  Candying,  etc.  2 
Physick  and  Chirurgery.  3  Cooking 
and  Housewifery.  Whereunto  is  added 
Sundry  Experiments  and  choice  Extrac- 
tions of  Waters,  Oyls,  etc.  Collected 
and  practised  by  the  late  Right  Honor- 
able and  Learned  Chymist,  the  Lord 
Ruthuen. ' ' 

The  preface,  after  an  inscription  *  ^  To 
the  Industrious  improvers  of  Nature  by 


252  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Art ;  especially  the  vertuous  Ladies  and 
Gentlewomen  of  the  Land, ' '  begins : 

'*  Courteous  Ladies,  etc.  The  first 
Edition  of  this — (cal  it  what  you  please) 
having  received  a  kind  entertainment 
from  your  Ladiships  hands,  for  reasons 
best  known  to  yourselves,  notwithstand- 
ing the  disorderly  and  confused  jum- 
bling together  of  things  of  different 
kinds,  hath  made  me  (who  am  not  a  little 
concerned  therein)  to  bethink  myself  of 
some  way,  how  to  encourage  and  requite 
your  Ladiships  Pains  and  Patience  (ver- 
tues,  indeed,  of  absolute  necessity  in 
such  brave  employments;  there  being 
nothing  excellent  that  is  not  withal  diffi- 
cult) in  the  profitable  spending  of  your 
vacant  minutes.'^  This  labored  and 
high-flying  mode  of  address  continues  to 
the  preface's  end.  .  .  .  ^'I  shall  thus 
leave  you  at  liberty  as  Lovers  in  Gar- 
dens, to  follow  your  own  fancies.  Take 
what  you  like,  and  delight  in  your 
choice,  and  leave  what  you  list  to  him. 


''THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  253 

whose  labour  is  not  lost  if  anything 
please." 

In  turning  the  leaves  of  the  book 
one  comes  upon  such  naive  discourse 
as  this: 

^  ^  To  make  the  face  white  and  fair. 

^^Wash  thy  face  with  Rosemary  boiled 
in  white  wine,  and  thou  shalt  be  fair; 
then  take  Erigan  and  stamp  it,  and  take 
the  juyce  thereof,  and  put  it  all  together 
and  wash  thy  face  therewith.    Proved. ' ' 

It  was  undoubtedly  the  success  of 
^^The  Ladies  Cabinet"  and  its  cousins 
german  that  led  to  the  publication  of  a 
fourth  edition  in  1658  of  another  com- 
pilation, which,  according  to  the  preface, 
was  to  go  ^'like  the  good  Samaritane 
giving  comfort  to  all  it  met."  The  title 
was  ^^The  Queens  Closet  opened:  In- 
comparable Secrets  in  Physick,  Chy- 
rurgery.  Preserving,  Candying,  and 
Cookery,  As  they  were  presented  unto 
the  Queen  By  the  most  Experienced 
Persons    of    our    times.  .  .  .      Trans- 


254  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

scribed  from  the  true  Copies  of  her 
Majesties  own  Receipt  Books,  by  W.  M. 
one  of  her  late  Servants.''  It  is  curious 
to  recall  that  this  book  was  published 
during  the  Cromwell  Protectorate — 1658 
is  the  year  of  the  death  of  Oliver — and 
that  the  queen  alluded  to  in  the  title — 
whose  portrait,  engraved  by  the  elder 
William  Faithorne,  forms  the  frontis- 
piece— was  Henrietta  Maria,  widow  of 
Charles  I.,  and  at  that  time  an  exile  in 
France. 

During  this  century,  which  saw  such 
publications  as  Rose's  ^^ School  for  the 
Officers  of  the  Mouth, "  and  ^  ^  Nature  Un- 
embowelled,"  a  woman,  Hannah  Wol- 
ley,  appears  as  author  of  ^^The  Cook's 
Guide."  All  such  compilations  have 
enduring  human  value,  but  we  actually 
gain  quite  as  much  of  this  oldest  of  arts 
from  such  records  as  those  the  indefati- 
gable Pepys  left  in  his  Diary.  At  that 
time  men  of  our  race  did  not  disdain  a 
knowledge  of  cookery.     Izaak  Walton, 


''THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  256 

''an  excellent  angler,  and  now  with 
God/'  dresses  chub  and  trout  in  his 
meadow-sweet  pages.  Even  Thomas 
Fuller,  amid  his  solacing  and  delightful 
^^  Worthies, '^  thinks  of  the  housewife, 
and  gives  a  receipt  for  metheglin. 

And  a  hundred  years  later  Dr.  John- 
son's friend,  the  Rev.  Richard  Warner, 
in  his  *  ^  Personal  Recollections, ' '  did  not 
hesitate  to  expand  upon  what  he  thought 
the  origin  of  mince  pies.  Warner's 
Johnsonian  weight  in  telling  his  fantasy 
recalls  Goldsmith's  quip  about  the  Doc- 
tor's little  fish  talking  like  whales,  and 
also  Johnson's  criticism  upon  his  own 
*^too  big  words  and  too  many  of  them." 

Warner  wrote,  ^^In  the  early  ages  of 
our  country,  when  its  present  widely 
spread  internal  trade  and  retail  business 
were  yet  in  their  infancy,  and  none  of 
the  modern  facilities  were  afforded  to 
the  cook  to  supply  herself  *on  the  spur 
of  the  moment,'  ...  it  was  the  practice 
of  all  prudent  housewives,  to  lay  in,  at 


266  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

the  conclusion  of  every  year  (from  some 
contiguous  periodical  fair),  a  stock  suffi- 
cient for  the  ensuing  annual  consump- 
tion, of  .  .  .  every  sweet  composition  for 
the  table — such  as  raisins,  currants,  cit- 
rons, and  ^spices  of  the  best.' 

*  *  The  ample  cupboard  .  .  .  within  the 
wainscot  of  the  dining  parlour  itself 
.  .  .  formed  the  safe  depository  of  these 
precious  stores. 

^^  ^When  merry  Christmas-tide  came 
round'  .  .  .  the  goodly  litter  of  the  cup- 
board, thus  various  in  kind  and  aspect, 
was  carefully  swept  into  one  common 
receptacle ;  the  mingled  mass  enveloped 
in  pastry  and  enclosed  within  the  duly 
heated  oven,  from  whence  .  .  .  perfect 
in  form,  colour,  odour,  flavour  and  tem- 
perament, it  smoked,  the  glory  of  the 
hospitable  Christmas  board,  hailed  from 
every  quarter  by  the  honourable  and  im- 
perishable denomination  of  the  Mince- 
Pye.'' 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  257 

In  the  eighteenth  century  women 
themselves,  following  Hannah  Wolley, 
began  cook-book  compiling.  So  great 
was  their  success  that  we  find  Mrs.  Eliza- 
beth Moxon's  ^^  English  Honsewifry'' 
going  into  its  ninth  edition  in  the  Lon- 
don market  of  1764.  All  through  history 
there  have  been  surprises  coming  to 
prejudiced  minds  out  of  the  despised 
and  Nazarene.  It  was  so  about  this  mat- 
ter of  cook-books — small  in  itself,  great 
in  its  far-reaching  results  to  the  health 
and  development  of  the  human  race. 

Women  had  been  taught  the  alphabet. 
But  the  dogmatism  of  Dr.  Johnson 
voiced  the  judgment  of  many  of  our 
forebears :  a  dominant  power  is  always 
hard  in  its  estimate  of  the  capacities  it 
controls.  ^  ^  Women  can  spin  very  well, ' ' 
said  the  great  Cham,  ^'but  they  can  not 
make  a  good  book  of  cookery. ' '  He  was 
talking  to  ^'the  swan  of  Lichfield,^'  little 
Anna  Seward,  when  he  said  this,  and 
also  to  a  London  publisher.     The  book 

17 


258  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

they  were  speaking  of  had  been  put 
forth  by  the  now  famous  Mrs.  Hannah 
Glasse,  said  to  be  the  wife  of  a  London 
attorney. 

The  doctor — possibly  with  an  eye  to 
business,  a  publisher  being  present — 
was  describing  a  volume  he  had  in  mind 
to  make,  ^^a  book  upon  philosophical 
principles,"  **a  better  book  of  cookery 
than  has  ever  yet  been  written.'* 
**Then,''  wisely  said  the  dogmatic  doc- 
tor, ^'as  you  can  not  make  bad  meat 
good,  I  would  tell  what  is  the  best 
butcher's  meat,  the  best  beef,  the  best 
pieces ;  how  to  choose  young  fowls ;  the 
proper  seasons  of  different  vegetables; 
and  then  how  to  roast  and  boil  and  com- 
pound." This  was  the  plan  of  a  poet, 
essayist,  lexicographer,  and  the  leading 
man  of  letters  of  his  day.  His  cook- 
book was  never  written. 

But  good  Mrs.  Glasse  had  also  with 
large  spirit  aimed  at  teaching  the  igno- 
rant, possibly  those  of  a  kind  least  often 


*'THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  259 

thought  of  hy  instructors  in  her  art. 
She  had,  forsooth,  caught  her  hare  out- 
side her  book,  even  if  she  never  found 
him  in  its  page.  ^  ^  If  I  have  not  wrote  in 
the  high  polite  style,''  she  says,  with  a 
heart  helpful  toward  the  misunderstood 
and  oppressed,  and  possibly  with  the 
pages  of  some  pretentious  chef  in  mind, 
*'I  hope  I  shall  be  forgiven;  for  my  in- 
tention is  to  instruct  the  lower  sort,  and 
therefore  must  treat  them  in  their  own 
way.  For  example,  when  I  bid  them 
lard  a  fowl,  if  I  should  bid  them  lard 
with  large  lardoons,  they  would  not 
know  what  I  meant ;  but  when  I  say  they 
must  lard  with  little  pieces  of  bacon, 
they  know  what  I  mean.  So  in  many 
other  things  in  Cookery  the  great  cooks 
have  such  a  high  way  of  expressing 
themselves,  that  the  poor  girls  are  at  a 
loss  to  know  what  they  mean. ' ' 

Mrs.  Glasse's  book  was  published  in 
1747 — ^while  Dr.  Johnson  had  still  thirty- 
seven  years  in  which  to  *^  boast  of  the 


260  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

niceness  of  his  palate,"  and  spill  his 
food  upon  his  waistcoat.  *  ^  Whenever, ' ' 
says  Macaulay,  *^he  was  so  fortunate  as 
to  have  near  him  a  hare  that  had  been 
kept  too  long,  or  a  meat  pie  made  with 
rancid  butter,  he  gorged  himelf  with 
such  violence  that  his  veins  swelled  and 
the  moisture  broke  out  on  his  forehead. ' ' 
But  within  forty-eight  years  of  the  De- 
cember his  poor  body  was  borne  from 
the  house  behind  Fleet  Street  to  its  rest- 
ing-place in  Westminster  Abbey,  a  thin 
volume,  ^^The  Frugal  Housewife,'' 
written  by  our  American  Lydia  Maria 
Child,  had  passed  to  its  ninth  London 
edition,  in  that  day  sales  being  more 
often  than  in  our  own  a  testimony  of 
merit.  This  prevailing  of  justice  over 
prejudice  is  *^too  good  for  any  but  very 
honest  people,''  as  Izaak  Walton  said 
of  roast  pike.  Dogmatism  is  always 
eating  its  own  words. 

Since   the   master   in   literature.   Dr. 
Johnson,  planned  his  cook-book  many 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  261 

cooking  men  have  dipped  ink  in  behalf 
of  instruction  in  their  art.  Such  names 
as  Farley,  Careme,  and  Soyer  have  been 
written,  if  not  in  marble  or  bronze,  at 
least  in  sugar  of  the  last  caramel  degree 
— unappreciated  excellencies  mainly  be- 
cause of  the  inattention  of  the  public  to 
what  nourishes  it,  and  lack  of  the  knowl- 
edge that  the  one  who  introduces  an 
inexpensive,  palatable,  and  digestible 
dish  benefits  his  fellow-men. 

The  names  of  these  club  cooks  and 
royal  cooks  are  not  so  often  referred  to 
as  that  of  the  large  and  human-hearted 
Mrs.  Glasse.  A  key  to  their  impulse 
toward  book-making  must,  however, 
have  been  that  offered  by  Master  Far- 
ley, chief  cook  at  the  London  Tavern, 
who  wrote  in  1791,  a. hundred  and  four- 
teen years  ago:  ^^ Cookery,  like  every 
other  Art,  has  been  moving  forward  to 
perfection  by  slow  Degrees.  .  .  .  And 
although  there  are  so  many  Books  of 
this  Kind  already  published,  that  one 


262  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

would  hardly  think  there  could  be  Occa- 
sion for  another,  yet  we  flatter  ourselves, 
that  the  Readers  of  this  Work  will  find, 
from  a  candid  Perusal,  and  an  impar- 
tial Comparison,  that  our  Pretensions  to 
the  Favour  of  the  Public  are  not  ill- 
founded.  ' ' 

Such  considerations  as  those  of  Mas- 
ter Farley  seem  to  lead  to  the  present 
great  output.  But  nowadays  our  social 
conditions  and  our  intricate  and  in- 
volved household  arrangements  demand 
a  specialization  of  duties.  The  average 
old  cook-book  has  become  insufficient. 
It  has  evolved  into  household-directing 
as  well  as  cook-directing  books,  compre- 
hending the  whole  subject  of  esoteric 
economies.  This  is  a  curious  enlarge- 
ment ;  and  one  cause,  and  result,  of  it  is 
that  the  men  and  women  of  our  domestic 
corps  are  better  trained,  better  equipped 
with  a  logical,  systematized,  scientific 
knowledge,  that  they  are  in  a  degree 
specialists — in  a  measure  as  the  engineer 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  263 

of  an  ocean  greyhound  is  a  specialist,  or 
the  professor  of  mathematics,  or  the 
writer  of  novels  is  a  specialist.  And 
specialists  should  have  the  dignity  of 
special  treatment.  In  this  movement,  it 
is  to  be  hoped,  is  the  wiping  out  of  the 
social  stigma  under  which  domestic 
service  has  so  long  lain  in  our  country, 
and  a  beginning  of  the  independence  of 
the  domestic  laborer — that  he  or  she 
shall  possess  himself  or  herself  equally 
with  others — as  other  free-born  people 
possess  themselves,  that  is. 

And  closely  allied  with  this  specializa- 
tion another  notable  thing  has  come 
about.  Science  with  its  microscope  has 
finally  taught  what  religion  with  its 
manifold  precepts  of  humility  and 
humanity  has  failed  for  centuries  to 
accomplish,  thus  evidencing  that  true 
science  and  true  religion  reach  one  and 
the  same  end.  There  are  no  menial 
duties,  science  clearly  enunciates:  the 
so-called  drudgery  is  often  the  most  im- 


264  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

portant  of  work,  especially  when  the 
worker  brings  to  his  task  a  large  knowl- 
edge of  its  worth  in  *  preserving  and 
sweetening  human  life,  and  perfectness 
as  the  sole  and  satisfactory  aim.  Only 
the  careless,  thriftless  workers,  the  in- 
efficient and  possessed  with  no  zeal  for 
perfection  of  execution,  only  these  are 
the  menials  according  to  the  genuine 
teachings  of  our  day — and  the  ignorant, 
unlifted  worker's  work  is  menial  (using 
the  word  again  in  its  modern  English 
and  not  its  old  Norman-French  usage) 
whatever  his  employment. 

In  verse  this  was  said  long  ago,  as  the 
imagination  is  always  forestalling  prac- 
tical knowledge,  and  George  Herbert,  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  foreran  our 
science  in  his  ^  ^  Elixir : ' ' 


All  may  of  thee  partake: 

Nothing  can  be  so  mean, 
Which  with  this  tincture  for  thy  sake 

Will  not  grow  bright  and  clean. 


"THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  265 

"  A  servant  with  this  clause 
Makes  drudgery  divine; 
Who  sweeps  a  room,  as  for  thy  laws, 
Makes  that  and  th'  action  fine. 

"  This  is  the  famous  stone 

That  tumeth  all  to  gold : 
For  that  which  God  doth  touch  and  own 
Cannot  for  less  be  told." 


Present-day,  up-to-date  books  on 
housekeeping  stand  for  the  fact  that  in 
our  households,  whatever  the  estimates 
of  the  past  and  of  other  social  condi- 
tions, all  work  is  dignified — none  is 
menial.  For  besides  intelligent  knowl- 
edge and  execution,  what  in  reality,  they 
ask,  gives  dignity  to  labor  1  Weight  and 
importance  of  that  particular  task  to 
our  fellow-beings?  What  then  shall  we 
say  of  the  duties  of  cook?  of  house- 
maid? of  chambermaid?  of  the  handy 
man,  or  of  the  modest  maid  of  all  work  ? 
For  upon  the  efficient  performance  of 
the  supposedly  humblest  domestic  servi- 


266  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

tor  depends  each  life  of  the  family. 
Such  interdependence  brings  the  em- 
ployed very  close  to  the  employer,  and 
no  bond  could  knit  the  varied  elements 
of  a  household  more  closely,  none  should 
knit  it  more  humanly. 

The  human,  then,  are  the  first  of  the 
relations  that  exist  between  employer 
and  employee,  that  ^'God  hath  made  of 
one  blood  all  nations  of  the  earth.''  It 
is  a  truth  not  often  enough  in  the  minds 
of  the  parties  to  a  domestic-service  com- 
pact. And  besides  this  gospel  of  Paul 
are  two  catch-phrases,  not  so  illuminated 
but  equally  humane,  which  sprang  from 
the  ameliorating  spirit  of  the  last  cen- 
tury— **Put  yourself  in  his  place,''  and 
'* Everybody  is  as  good  as  I."  These 
form  the  best  bed-rock  for  all  relations 
between  master  and  servant.  There  is 
need  of  emphasizing  this  point  in  our 
books  on  affairs  of  the  house,  for  a 
majority  of  our  notably  rich  are  new  to 
riches  and  new  to  knowledge,  and  as 


"THE   GULLET  SCIENCE"  267 

employers  have  not  learned  the  limita- 
tion of  every  child  of  indulgence  and 
also  polite  manners  in  early  life. 

It  is  after  all  a  difference  of  environ- 
ment that  makes  the  difference  between 
mistress  and  maid,  between  master  and 
man.  The  human  being  is  as  plastic  as 
clay — is  clay  in  the  hands  of  circum- 
stance. If  his  support  of  wife  and  chil- 
dren depended  upon  obsequiousness  of 
bearing,  the  master  might,  like  the 
butler,  approximate  Uriah  Heep.  If  the 
mistress 's  love  of  delicacy  and  color  had 
not  been  cultivated  by  association  with 
taste  from  childhood,  her  finery  might 
be  as  vulgar  as  the  maid's  which  pro- 
vokes her  satire.  It  is  after  all  a  ques- 
tion of  surroundings  and  education. 
And  in  this  country,  where  Aladdin- 
fortunes  spring  into  being  by  the  rub- 
bing of  a  lamp — where  families  of,  for 
example,  many  centuries  of  the  down- 
trodden life  of  European  peasant  jump 
from  direst  poverty  to  untold  wealth — 


268  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

environment  has  often  no  opportunity  to 
form  the  folk  of  gentle  breeding.  Many- 
instances  are  not  lacking  where  those 
who  wait  are  more  gently  bred  than 
those  who  are  waited  upon. 

In  their  larger  discourse,  then,  up-to- 
date  household  books  stand  for  the  very 
essence  of  democracy  and  human-heart- 
edness — which  is  also  the  very  essence 
of  aristocracy.  After  the  old  manner 
which  Master  Farley  described,  our 
women  seem  to  have  given  their  books 
to  the  public  with  the  faith  that  they 
contain  much  other  books  have  not 
touched — to  stand  for  an  absolutely 
equable  humanity,  for  kindness  and 
enduring  courtesy  between  those  who 
employ  and  those  who  are  employed,  the 
poor  rich  and  the  rich  poor,  the  house- 
holders and  the  houseworkers — to  state 
the  relations  between  master  and  man 
and  mistress  and  maid  more  explicitly 
than  they  have  before  been  stated,  and 
thus  to  help  toward  a  more  perfect  or- 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  269 

ganization  of  the  forces  that  carry  on 
our  households — to  direct  with  scien- 
tific and  economic  prevision  the  food  of 
the  house  members ;  to  emphasize  in  all 
departments  of  the  house  thoroughgoing 
sanitation  and  scientific  cleanliness. 

Of  questions  of  the  household — of 
housekeeping  and  home-making — our 
American  women  have  been  supposed 
somewhat  careless.  Possibly  this  judg- 
ment over  the  sea  has  been  builded  upon 
our  women's  vivacity,  and  a  subtle  intel- 
lectual force  they  possess,  and  also  from 
their  interest  in  affairs  at  large,  and 
again  from  their  careful  and  cleanly  at- 
tention  to  their  person — ' '  they  keep  their 
teeth  too  clean,''  says  a  much-read 
French  author.  Noting  such  character- 
istics, foreigners  have  jumped  to  the 
conclusion  that  American  women  are  not 
skilled  in  works  within  doors.  In  almost 
every  European  country  this  is  common 
report.  ^^We  German  women  are  such 
devoted  housekeepers, ' '  said  the  wife  of 


270  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

an  eminent  Dentscher,  *  ^  and  you  Ameri- 
can women  know  so  little  about  such 
things!''  *^ Bless  your  heart!''  I  ex- 
claimed— or  if  not  just  that  then  its  Ger- 
man equivalent — thinking  of  the  per- 
fectly kept  homes  from  the  rocks  and 
pines  of  Maine  to  the  California  surf; 
**you  German  women  with  your  little 
haushaltungen,  heating  your  rooms  with 
porcelain  stoves,  and  your  frequent  re- 
version in  meals  to  the  simplicity  of 
wurst  and  beer,  have  no  conception  of 
the  size  and  complexity  of  American 
households  and  the  executive  capabili- 
ties necessary  to  keep  them  in  orderly 
work.  Yours  is  mere  doll's  housekeep- 
ing— no  furnaces,  no  hot  water,  no  elec- 
tricity, no  elevators,  no  telephone,  and 
no  elaborate  menus." 

Our  American  women  are  model 
housekeepers  and  home-makers,  as  thou- 
sands of  homes  testify,  but  the  interests 
of  the  mistresses  of  these  houses  are 
broader,  their  lives  are  commonly  more 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  271 

projected  into  the  outer  world  of  organ- 
ized philanthropy  and  art  than  women's 
lives  abroad,  and  the  apparent  non- 
intrusion of  domestic  affairs  leads  for- 
eigners to  misinterpret  their  interest 
and  their  zeal.  It  is  the  consummate 
executive  who  can  set  aside  most  per- 
sonal cares  and  take  on  others  efficiently. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  here  as  where  a 
learned  professor  declared:  ^^Die  erste 
Tugend  eines  Weibes  ist  die  Sparsam- 
keit." 

To  have  a  home  in  which  daily  duties 
move  without  noise  and  as  like  a  clock 
as  its  human  machinery  will  permit,  and 
to  have  a  table  of  simplicity  and  excel- 
lence, is  worth  a  pleasure-giving  ambi- 
tion and  a  womanly  ambition.  It  is  to 
bring,  in  current  critical  phrase,  three- 
fourths  of  the  comfort  of  life  to  those 
whose  lives  are  joined  to  the  mistress  of 
such  a  household — the  loaf-giver  who 
spends  her  brains  for  each  ordered  day 
and  meal.     Moreover,  and  greatest  of 


272  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

all,  to  plan  and  carry  on  so  excellent  an 
establishment  is  far-reaching  upon  all 
men.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  morality 
— is  duty — i.e.,  service — and  law. 

The  French  aver  that  men  of  the 
larger  capacity  have  for  food  a  particu- 
larly keen  enjoyment.  Possibly  this 
holds  good  for  Frenchmen — for  the 
author  of  Monte  Cristo,  or  for  a  Brillat- 
Savarin,  of  whose  taste  the  following 
story  is  told:  ^* Halting  one  day  at  Sens, 
when  on  his  way  to  Lyons,  Savarin  sent, 
according  to  his  invariable  custom,  for 
the  cook,  and  asked  what  he  could  have 
for  dinner.  ^Little  enough,'  was  the 
reply.  ^But  let  us  see,'  retorted  Sava- 
rin; ^let  us  go  into  the  kitchen  and  talk 
the  matter  over.'  There  he  found  four 
turkeys  roasting.  ^Why!'  exclaimed  he, 
^you  told  me  you  had  nothing  in  the 
house!  let  me  have  one  of  those  tur- 
keys.' *  Impossible ! '  said  the  cook; 
*they  are  all  bespoken  by  a  gentleman 
up-stairs. '    ^  He  must  have  a  large  party 


*'THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  273 

to  dine  with  him,  thenT  ^No;  he  dines 
by  himself.'  ^Indeed!'  said  the  gas- 
tronome; ^I  should  like  much  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  the  man  who  orders  four 
turkeys  for  his  own  eating.'  The  cook 
was  sure  the  gentleman  would  be  glad 
of  his  acquaintance,  and  Savarin,  on 
going  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  stranger, 
found  him  to  be  no  other  than  his  own 
son.  ^What!  you  rascal!  four  turkeys 
all  to  yourself ! '  ^  Yes,  sir, '  said  Savarin, 
junior;  *you  know  that  when  we  have  a 
turkey  at  home  you  always  reserve  for 
yourself  the  pope's  nose ;  I  was  resolved 
to  regale  myself  for  once  in  my  life; 
and  here  I  am,  ready  to  begin,  although 
I  did  not  expect  the  honour  of  your 
company.'  " 

The  French  may  say  truly  of  the 
famous  ^^high-priest  of  gastronomy." 
And  a  story  which  has  lately  appeared 
in  Germany  tells  of  a  sensitive  palate  in 
Goethe :  ^  ^  At  a  small  party  at  the  court 
of  Weimar,  the  Marshal  asked  permis- 

18 


274  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

sion  to  submit  a  nameless  sample  of 
wine.  Accordingly,  a  red  wine  was  cir- 
culated, tasted,  and  much  commended. 
Several  of  the  company  pronounced  it 
Burgundy,  but  could  not  agree  as  to  the 
special  vintage  or  the  year.  Goethe 
alone  tasted  and  tasted  again,  shook  his 
head,  and,  with  a  meditative  air,  set  his 
glass  on  the  table.  ^Your  Excellency 
appears  to  be  of  a  different  opinion,' 
said  the  court  marshal.  ^  May  I  ask  what 
name  you  give  to  the  wine  1 '  '  The  wine, ' 
said  the  poet,  ^is  quite  unknown  to  me; 
but  I  do  not  think  it  is  a  Burgundy.  I 
should  rather  consider  it  a  good  Jena 
wine  that  has  been  kept  for  some  while 
in  a  Madeira  cask.'  ^And  so,  in  fact,  it 
is,'  said  the  court  marshal.  For  a  more 
discriminating  palate,  one  must  go  to  the 
story  of  the  rival  wine-tasters  in  *Don 
Quixote,'  who  from  a  single  glass 
detected  the  key  and  leather  thong  in  a 
cask  of  wine. ' ' 
But  that  great  capacity  means  also 


♦'THE  GULLET  SCIENCE"  275 

discriminating  palate  could  hardly  be 
true  for  Americans  of  the  old  stock  and 
simple  life.  Judge  Usher,  Secretary  of 
Interior  in  Lincoln's  Cabinet  at  the  time 
of  the  President's  death,  said  that  he 
had  never  heard  Abraham  Lincoln  refer 
to  his  food  in  any  way  whatever. 

From  a  consideration  of  women's 
cook-books  springs  another  suggestion. 
Heaped  upon  one 's  table,  the  open  pages 
and  appetiteful  illustrations  put  one  to 
thinking  that  if  women  of  intelligence, 
and  of  leisure  except  for  burdens  they 
assume  under  so-called  charity  or  a  fad- 
dish impulse,  were  to  take  each  some 
department  of  the  household,  and  give 
time  and  effort  to  gaining  a  complete 
knowledge  of  that  department — a  knowl- 
edge of  its  evolution  and  history,  of  its 
scientific  and  hygienic  bearings,  of  its 
gastronomic  values  if  it  touched  upon 
the  table — there  would  be  great  gain  to 
the  world  at  large  and  to  their  friends. 


276  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

For  instance,  if  a  woman  skilled  in 
domestic  science  and  the  domestic  arts 
were  to  take  some  fruit,  or  some  vege- 
table, or  cereal,  or  meat,  and  develop 
to  the  utmost  what  an  old  anthor-cook 
calls,  after  those  cook-oracles  of  ancient 
Eome,  the  ^^Apician  mysteries"  of  the 
dish,  her  name  would  deserve  to  go  down 
to  posterity  with  something  of  the  odor 
— or  flavor — of  sanctity.  Hundreds  of 
saints  in  the  calendar  never  did  any- 
thing half  so  meritorious  and  worthy  of 
felicitous  recognition  from  their  fellow- 
men. 

Take,  for  example,  the  democratic 
cabbage  and  its  cousins  german,  and 
their  treatment  in  the  average  cuisine. 
What  might  not  such  an  investigation 
show  this  Monsieur  Chou  or  Herr  Kohl 
and  his  relations  capable  of! — the  cab- 
bage itself,  the  Scotch  kale,  the  Jersey 
cabbage,  and  Brussels  sprouts,  and  cauli- 
flower, and  broccoli,  and  kohl-rabi,  and 
cabbage  palms,  and  still  other  species! 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  277 

Looked  at  in  their  evolution,  and  the 
part  they  have  played  in  human  history 
as  far  back  as  in  old  Persia  and  the  Ana- 
basis of  the  Greeks,  and  so  late  as  the 
famine  times  of  Ireland,  these  succulent 
and  nutritious  vegetables  would  be  most 
interesting.  And,  even  if  chemically 
their  elements  vary,  the  fact  that  all  the 
family  are  blessed  with  a  large  percent- 
age of  nitrogen  might  be  shown  to  have 
increased  their  usefulness  long  before 
chemists  analyzed  their  tissues  and  told 
us  why  men  who  could  not  buy  meat 
so  carefully  cultivated  the  foody  leaves. 
Under  such  sane  and  beneficent  impulses 
every  well-directed  household  would 
become  an  experiment  station  for  the 
study  of  human  food — not  the  extrava- 
gant and  rare  after  the  test  and  search 
of  imperial  Heliogabalus,  but  in  the 
best  modern,  scientific,  economic,  gas- 
tronomic, and  democratic  manner. 

Since  making  this  foregoing  sugges- 
tion I  find  this  point  similarly  touched 


278  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

by  the  man  who  dissertated  on  roast  pig. 
*^It  is  a  desideratum,'^  says  Lamb,  ^'in 
works  that  treat  de  re  culinaria,  that  we 
have  no  rationale  of  sauces,  or  theory  of 
mixed  flavours :  as  to  show  why  cabbage 
is  reprehensible  with  roast  beef,  laudable 
with  bacon;  why  the  haunch  of  mutton 
seeks  the  alliance  of  currant  jelly,  the 
shoulder  civilly  declineth  it;  why  loin 
of  veal  (a  pretty  problem),  being  itself 
unctious,  seeketh  the  adventitious  lu- 
bricity of  melted  butter — and  why  the 
same  part  in  pork,  not  more  oleaginous, 
abhorreth  from  it ;  why  the  French  bean 
sympathizes  with  the  flesh  of  deer ;  why 
salt  fish  points  to  parsnips.  .  .  .  We  are 
as  yet  but  in  the  empirical  stage  of  cook- 
ery. We  feed  ignorantly,  and  want  to 
be  able  to  give  a  reason  of  the  relish 
that  is  in  us.'' 

In  speaking  of  modern  household 
books  one  cannot  have  done  without  add- 
ing still  one  word  more  about  the  use  of 
the  word  *^ servant"  as  these  books  seem 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  279 

to  speak  of  it.  Owing  to  an  attempted 
Europeanizing  of  our  ideas,  and  also  to 
the  fact  that  many  of  onr  domestics  are 
of  foreign  birth  and  habits  of  thought — 
or  of  the  lowly,  velvet-voiced,  unassert- 
ive suavity  of  the  most  loyal  negro — the 
term  has  gradually  crept  to  a  quasi  ac- 
ceptance in  this  country.  It  is  a  word 
not  infrequently  obnoxious  to  Ameri- 
cans— employers — of  the  old  stock,  and 
trained  in  the  spirit  which  wrote  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  fought 
its  sequent  War.  ^^From  the  time  of 
the  Revolution, ' '  says  Miss  Salmon  in 
her  ^^ Domestic  Service,'*  ** until  about 
1850  the  word  ^servant'  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  generally  applied  in  either 
section  [north  or  south]  to  white  per- 
sons of  American  birth. ' ' 

The  term  indicates  social  conditions 
which  no  longer  exist  and  represents 
ideas  which  no  longer  have  real  life — 
we  have  but  to  consider  how  the  radical 
Defoe  published,  in  1724,  ^^The  Great 


280  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

Law  of  Subordination  considered;  or, 
the  Insolence  and  Unsufferable  Behav- 
iour of  Servants  in  England  duly  en- 
quired into/e  to  be  convinced  of  our  vast 
advance  in  human  sympathy — and  a 
revival  of  our  American  spirit  toward 
the  word  would  be  a  wholesome  course. 
In  the  mouths  of  many  who  use  it  to 
excess — those  mainly  at  fault  are  inno- 
cently imitative,  unthinking,  or  preten- 
tious women — it  sounds  ungracious,  if 
not  vulgar,  and  distinctly  untrue  to  those 
who  made  the  country  for  us  and  de- 
sirable for  us  to  live  in ;  and  untrue  also 
to  the  best  social  feeling  of  to-day.  It 
is  still  for  a  genuine  American  rather 
hard  to  imagine  a  person  such  as  the 
word  ^^  servant 'e  connotes — a  lackey,  a 
receiver  of  tips  of  any  sort — with  an 
election  ballot  in  hand  and  voting  think- 
ingly,  knowingly,  intelligently  for  the 
guidance  of  our  great  government.  It 
would  not  have  been  so  dilSicult  for  the 
old    dohXot  of  Athens  to  vote  upon  the 


'♦THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  281 

Pnyx  as  for  such  a  man  to  vote  aright 
for  us.  And  not  infrequently,  in  the  ups 
and  downs  of  speculation  and  the  mush- 
room growth  and  life  of  fortunes  among 
us,  the  ^ '  servant, ' '  to  use  the  old  biblical 
phrase,  is  sometimes  greater  in  moral, 
intellectual,  and  social  graces  than  his 
''lord/'  The  term  belongs  to  times, 
and  the  temperamental  condition  of 
times  when  traces  of  slavery  were 
common,  and  when  employers  believed, 
and  acted  upon  the  faith,  that  they 
hired  not  a  person's  labor  but  the 
person  himself — or  herself— who  was 
subject  to  a  sort  of  ownership  and 
control. 

Let  us  remand  the  word  to  the  days 
of  Dean  Swift  and  such  conditions  as  the 
tremendous  satire  of  his  ''Directions  to 
Servants''  exhibited,  in  which — except 
perhaps  in  Swift's  great  heart — there 
was  neither  the  humanity  of  our  times, 
nor  the  courtesy  of  our  times,  nor  the 
sure    knowledge    of    our    times — ^which 


282  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

endeavor  to  create,  and,  in  truth,  are 
gradually  making  trained  and  skilful 
workers  in  every  department,  and  de- 
mand in  return  for  service  with  per- 
fectness  as  its  aim,  independence  of 
the  person,  dignified  treatment  and 
genuine  respect  from  the  employer. 

All  these  things  the  women  ^s  house- 
hold and  cook-books  will  be,  nay,  are, 
gradually  teaching,  and  that  which 
Charles  Carter,  ^'lately  cook  to  his 
Grace  the  Duke  of  Argyle,''  wrote  in 
1730  may  still  hold  good:  ''  'Twill  be 
very  easy,''  said  Master  Carter,  ^'for 
an  ordinary  Cook  when  he  is  well- 
instructed  in  the  most  Elegant  Parts  of 
his  Profession  to  lower  his  Hand  at  any 
time;  and  he  that  can  excellently  per- 
form in  a  Courtly  and  Grand  Manner, 
will  never  be  at  a  Loss  in  any  other." 
When  this  future  knowledge  and  adjust- 
ment come  we  shall  be  free  from  the  ten- 
dencies which  Mistress  Glasse,  after  her 
outspoken  manner,  describes  of  her  own 


"THE   GULLET   SCIENCE"  283 

generation :  ^  ^  So  much  is  the  blind  folly 
of  this  age,'^  cries  the  good  woman, 
^^that  they  would  rather  be  imposed 
upon  by  a  French  booby  than  give  en- 
couragement to  a  good  English  cook. ' ' 

Economic  changes  such  as  we  have 
indicated  must  in  measurable  time  en- 
sue. The  science  and  the  art  of  con- 
ducting a  house  are  now  obtaining  rec- 
ognition in  our  schools.  Not  long,  and 
the  knowledge  will  be  widespread.  Its 
very  existence,  and  the  possibility  of  its 
diffusion,  is  a  result  of  the  nineteenth 
century  movement  for  the  broadening  of 
women's  knowledge  and  the  expansion 
of  their  interests  and  independence — 
this  wedded  with  the  humane  convic- 
tion that  the  wisest  and  fruitfullest 
use  of  scientific  deduction  and  skill  is 
in  the  bettering  of  human  life.  Behind 
and  giving  potence  to  these  impulses  is 
the  fellowship,  liberty,  and  equality  of 
human  kind — the  great  idea  of  democ- 
racy. 


284  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Already  we  have  gone  back  to  the 
wholesomeness  of  our  English  fore- 
bears' estimate  that  the  physician  and 
cook  are  inseparable.  Further  still,  we 
may  ultimately  retrace  our  ideas,  and 
from  the  point  of  view  of  economics 
and  sociology  declare  that  with  us,  as 
with  the  old  Jews  and  Greeks,  the  priest 
and  the  cook  are  one. 


PLAGIARIZING   HUMORS   OF 
BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN 


And  this  I  sweare  by  blackest  brooke  of  hell, 
I  am  no  pick-purse  of  another's  wit. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney 

Yet  these  mine  owne,  I  wrong  not  other  men, 
Nor  traffique  farther  then  this  happy  clime, 
Nor  filch  from  Portes,  nor  from  Petrarchs  pen, 
A  fault  too  common  in  this  latter  time. 
Divine  Sir  Philip,  I  avouch  thy  writ, 
I  am  no  pick-purse  of  anothers  wit. 

Michael  Drayton 

A  thing  always  becomes  his  at  last  who  says 
it  best,  and  thus  makes  it  his  own. 

James  Kussell  Lowell 


PLAGIARIZING    HUMORS    OF 
BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 

Among  the  jocularities  of  literature 
none  is  greater  than  Squire  Bicker- 
staff's;  and  none  has  had  greater  re- 
sults— ^with  perhaps  one  exception.  The 
practicality  of  the  Squire's  jest  and  the 
flavor  of  it  suited  the  century  of  Squire 
Western  rather  than  our  own.  But  its 
excuse  was  in  the  end  it  served  of  break- 
ing the  old  astrologer's  hold  upon  the 
people. 

Jonathan  Swift  is  the  writer  to  whom 
the  original  Bickerstaff  squibs  are  in 
the  main  to  be  ascribed.  It  is  due  to 
Swift's  clarity  and  strength  that  they 
are  among  the  best  of  literary  fooling. 

But  Swift  was  not  alone.  He  had 
the  help  of  Addison,  Steele,  Prior,  Con- 
greve,  and  other  wits  of  Will's  Coffee- 
House  and  St.  James's.    Together  they 

287 


288  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

set  all  London  laughing.  Upon  Swift's 
shoulders,  however,  falls  the  onus  of  the 
joke  which  must  have  been  his  recreation 
amid  pamphleteering  and  the  smudging 
of  his  ecclesiastical  hand  with  political 
ink.    It  happened  in  1708. 

The  English  almanac  was  not  in 
Swift's  day  as  in  later  times  a  simple 
calendar  of  guesses  about  the  weather. 
It  was  rather  a  ^^prognosticator"  in 
ambiguous  phrase  of  war,  pestilence, 
murder,  and  such  horrors  as  our  yellow 
press  nowadays  serves  up  to  readers, 
like  in  development  to  the  conning  public 
of  the  old  almanacs.  It  was  at  all  times 
solemn  and  dogmatic.  What  the  alma- 
nac prognosticated  was  its  philomath's 
duty  to  furnish.  His  science  and  pre- 
science builded  a  supposed  influence  of 
the  stars  and  their  movements  upon  the 
moral  life  of  man. 

Squire  Bickerstaff's  jest  had  to  do 
with  almanac-makers,  and  was  directed 
against  a  chief  pretender.  Dr.  Partridge, 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     289 

the  astrologer  and  philomath  Pope  re- 
fers to  when  he  speaks  of  the  translation 
of  the  raped  ^^Lock''  to  the  skies: 

"  This  Partridge  soon  shall  view  in  cloudless  skies, 
When  next  he  looks  through  Galileo's  eyes; 
And  hence  th'  egregious  wizard  shall  foredoom 
The  fate  of  Louis  and  the  fall  of  Rome." 

In  the  seventeenth  century  the  ascend- 
ency of  these  charlatans  had  become 
alarming.  One  of  the  most  adroit  and 
unscrupulous  of  their  number — ^William 
Lilly — ^had  large  following.  They  not 
only  had  the  popular  ear,  but  now  and 
then  a  man  like  Dryden  inclined  to  them. 
Nor  did  Sir  Thomas  Browne  **  reject  a 
sober  and  regulated  astrology.'' 

At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  scandal  of  their  excesses  was 
growing,  and  it  was  then  that  Swift 
came  forward — just  as  Swift  was  con- 
stantly coming  forward  with  his  great 
humanity,  in  one  instance  to  save  Ire- 
land the  infliction  of  Wood's  halfpence, 

19 


290  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

and  again  in  protest  against  English  re- 
striction of  Irish  trade;  poor  Swift's 
heart  was  always  with  the  poor,  the 
duped  and  undefended — it  was  then  that 
Swift  came  forward  with  ^*  Predictions 
for  the  year  1708.  Wherein  the  Month, 
and  the  Day  of  the  Month,  are  set  down, 
the  Person  named,  and  the  great  Actions 
and  Events  of  next  Year  particularly 
related,  as  They  will  come  to  Pass. 
Written  to  Prevent  the  People  of  Eng- 
land from  being  farther  imposed  on  by 
the  vulgar  Almanack-Makers.'' 

The  surname  of  the  signature,  **  Isaac 
Bickerstaff , "  Swift  took  from  a  lock- 
smith's sign.  The  Isaac  he  added  as  not 
commonly  in  use. 

'^I  have  considered,"  he  begins,  *Hhe 
gross  abuse  of  astrology  in  this  kingdom, 
and  upon  debating  the  matter  with  my- 
self, I  could  not  possibly  lay  the  fault 
upon  the  art,  but  upon  those  gross  im- 
postors, who  set  up  to  be  the  artists.  I 
know   several   learned  men  have   con- 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     291 

tended  that  the  whole  is  a  cheat;  that 
it  is  absurd  and  ridiculous  to  imagine 
the  stars  can  have  any  influence  at  all 
upon  human  actions,  thoughts,  or  incli- 
nations; and  whoever  has  not  bent  his 
studies  that  way  may  be  excused  for 
thinking  so,  when  he  sees  in  how 
wretched  a  manner  that  noble  art  is 
treated  by  a  few  mean,  illiterate  traders 
between  us  and  the  stars ;  who  import  a 
yearly  stock  of  nonsense,  lies,  folly,  and 
impertinence,  which  they  offer  to  the 
world  as  genuine  from  the  planets, 
though  they  descend  from  no  greater  a 
height  than  their  own  brains.  .  .  . 

'  ^  As  for  the  few  following  predictions, 
I  now  offer  the  world,  I  f orebore  to  pub- 
lish them  till  I  had  perused  the  several 
Almanacks  for  the  year  we  are  now 
entered  upon.  I  found  them  all  in  the 
usual  strain,  and  I  beg  the  reader  will 
compare  their  manner  with  mine:  and 
here  I  make  bold  to  tell  the  world  that  I 
lay  the  whole  credit  of  my  art  upon  the 


292  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

truth  of  these  predictions ;  and  I  will  be 
content  that  Partridge  and  the  rest  of 
his  clan  may  hoot  me  for  a  cheat  and 
impostor,  if  I  fail  in  any  single  particu- 
lar of  moment.  .  .  . 

* '  My  first  prediction  is  but  a  trifle,  yet 
I  will  mention  it  to  show  how  ignorant 
these  sottish  pretenders  to  astrology  are 
in  their  own  concerns :  it  relates  to  Par- 
tridge, the  Almanack-maker.  I  have 
consulted  the  star  of  his  nativity  by  my 
own  rules,  and  find  he  will  infallibly  die 
upon  the  29th  of  March  next,  about 
eleven  at  night,  of  a  raging  fever ;  there- 
fore I  advise  him  to  consider  of  it,  and 
settle  his  affairs  in  time.  .  .  .*' 

An  **  Answer  to  Bickerstaff  by  a  Per- 
son of  Quality,^'  evidently  from  the 
hand  of  Swift  and  his  friends,  followed 
these  ^* Predictions.'' 

*^I  have  not  observed  for  some  years 
past,"  it  begins,  ^'any  insignificant 
paper  to  have  made  more  noise,  or  be 
more  greedily  bought,  than  that  of  these 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     293 

Predictions.  ...  I  shall  not  enter  upon 
the  examination  of  them;  but  think  it 
very  incumbent  upon  the  learned  Mr. 
Partridge  to  take  them  into  his  consid- 
eration, and  lay  as  many  errors  in 
astrology  as  possible  to  Mr.  Bicker- 
staff's  account.  He  may  justly,  I  think, 
challenge  the  'squire  to  publish  the  cal- 
culation he  has  made  of  Partridge's 
nativity,  by  the  credit  of  which  he  so 
determinately  pronounces  the  time  and 
manner  of  his  death;  and  Mr.  Bicker- 
staff  can  do  no  less  in  honour,  than  give 
Mr.  Partridge  the  same  advantage  of 
calculating  his,  by  sending  him  an 
account  of  the  time  and  place  of  his 
birth,  with  other  particulars  necessary 
for  such  a  work.  By  which,  no  doubt, 
the  learned  world  will  be  engaged  in  the 
dispute,  and  take  part  on  each  side 
according  as  they  are  inclined.  ..." 

^'The  Accomplishment  of  the  first  of 
Mr.  Bickerstaff's  Predictions,  being  an 
Account  of  the  Death  of  Mr.  Partridge, 


294  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

the  Almanack-Maker,  upon  the  29th  in- 
stant in  a  Letter  to  a  Person  of  Honour, 
written  in  the  year  1708/'  continues  the 
jocularity. 

'*My  Lord:  In  obedience  to  your 
Lordship's  commands,  as  well  as  to  sat- 
isfy my  own  curiosity,  I  have  some  days 
past  inquired  constantly  after  Partridge 
the  Almanack-maker,  of  whom  it  was 
foretold  in  Mr.  Bickerstaff's  Predic- 
tions, published  about  a  month  ago,  that 
he  should  die  the  29th  instant,  about 
eleven  at  night,  of  a  raging  fever.  .  .  . 
I  saw  him  accidentally  once  or  twice, 
about  ten  days  before  he  died,  and 
observed  he  began  very  much  to  droop 
and  languish,  though  I  hear  his  friends 
did  not  seem  to  apprehend  him  in  any 
danger.  About  two  or  three  days  ago  he 
grew  ill,  .  .  .  but  when  I  saw  him  he 
had  his  understanding  as  well  as  ever 
I  knew,  and  spoke  strong  and  hearty, 
without  any  seeming  uneasiness  or  con- 
straint [saying],  ...    *I  am  a  poor  ig- 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     295 

norant  fellow,  bred  to  a  mean  trade,  yet 
I  have  sense  enough  to  know  that  all 
pretences  of  foretelling  by  astrology  are 
deceits  for  this  manifest  reason :  because 
the  wise  and  the  learned,  who  can  only 
judge  whether  there  be  any  truth  in  this 
science,  do  all  unanimously  agree  to 
laugh  at  and  despise  it;  and  none  but 
the  poor,  ignorant  vulgar  give  it  any 
credit,  and  that  only  upon  the  word  of 
such  silly  wretches  as  I  and  my  fellows, 
who  can  hardly  write  or  read.'  .  .  . 

^* After  half  an  hour's  conversation  I 
took  my  leave,  being  almost  stifled  with 
the  closeness  of  the  room.  I  imagined 
he  could  not  hold  out  long,  and  therefore 
withdrew  to  a  little  coffee-house  hard  by, 
leaving  a  servant  at  the  house  with 
orders  to  come  immediately  and  tell  me, 
as  near  as  he  could,  the  minute  when 
Partridge  should  expire,  which  was  not 
above  two  hours  after." 

The  burlesque  next  before  the  public, 
*^ Squire  Bickerstaff  detected;    or,  the 


296  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Astrological  Impostor  convicted,  by 
John  Partridge,  student  of  physic  and 
astrology,  a  True  and  Impartial  account 
of  the  Proceedings  of  Isaac  Bickerstaff, 
Esq.,  against  me,''  was  doubtless  drawn 
up  by  Addison's  friend  Yalden,  whom 
Scott  speaks  of  as  ^^Partridge's  near 
neighbor. ' ' 

'^The  28th  of  March,  Anno  Dom. 
1708,"  it  begins,  ^' being  the  night  this 
sham  prophet  had  so  impudently  fixed 
for  my  last,  which  made  little  impression 
on  myself:  but  I  cannot  answer  for  my 
whole  family ;  for  my  wife,  with  concern 
more  than  usual,  prevailed  on  me  to  take 
somewhat  to  sweat  for  a  cold;  and 
between  the  hours  of  eight  and  nine  to 
go  to  bed;  the  maid,  as  she  was  warm- 
ing my  bed,  with  a  curiosity  natural  to 
young  wenches,  runs  to  the  window,  and 
asks  of  one  passing  the  street  who  the 
bell  tolled  for?  Dr.  Partridge,  says  he, 
the  famous  almanack-maker,  who  died 
suddenly  this  evening:    the  poor  girl, 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     297 

provoked,  told  him  he  lied  like  a  rascal ; 
the  other  very  sedately  replied,  the  sex- 
ton had  so  informed  him,  and  if  false, 
he  was  to  blame  for  imposing  upon 
a  stranger.  She  asked  a  second,  and  a 
third,  as  they  passed,  and  every  one  was 
in  the  same  tone.  Now,  I  do  not  say 
these  are  accomplices  to  a  certain  astro- 
logical 'squire,  and  that  one  Bickerstaff 
might  be  sauntering  thereabout,  because 
I  will  assert  nothing  here,  but  what  I 
dare  attest  for  plain  matter  of  fact.  My 
wife  at  this  fell  into  a  violent  disorder, 
and  I  must  own  I  was  a  little  discom- 
posed at  the  oddness  of  the  accident. 
In  the  mean  time  one  knocks  at  my  door ; 
Betty  runs  down,  and  opening,  finds  a 
sober  grave  person,  who  modestly  in- 
quires if  this  was  Dr.  Partridge's?  She, 
taking  him  for  some  cautious  city 
patient,  that  came  at  that  time  for  pri- 
vacy, shews  him  into  the  dining-room. 
As  soon  as  I  could  compose  myself,  I 
went  to  him,  and  was  surprised  to  find 


298  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

my  gentleman  mounted  on  a  table  with 
a  two-foot  rule  in  his  hand,  measuring 
my  walls,  and  taking  the  dimensions  of 
the  room.  Pray,  sir,  says  I,  not  to  in- 
terrupt you,  have  you  any  business  with 
me  ? — Only,  sir,  replies  he,  order  the  girl 
to  bring  me  a  better  light,  for  this  is  a 
very  dim  one. — Sir,  says  I,  my  name  is 
Partridge. — 0!  the  doctor's  brother, 
belike,  cries  he ;  the  staircase,  I  believe, 
and  these  two  apartments  hung  in  close 
mourning  will  be  sufficient,  and  only  a 
strip  of  bays  round  the  other  rooms. 
The  doctor  must  needs  die  rich,  he  had 
great  dealings  in  his  way  for  many 
years;  if  he  had  no  family  coat,  you 
had  as  good  use  the  escutcheons  of  the 
company,  they  are  as  showish,  and  will 
look  as  magnificent,  as  if  he  was  de- 
scended from  the  blood  royal. — With 
that  I  assumed  a  greater  air  of  author- 
ity, and  demanded  who  employed  him, 
or  how  he  came  there  1 — ^Why,  I  was  sent, 
sir,  by  the  company  of  undertakers,  says 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     299 

he,  and  they  were  employed  by  the 
honest  gentleman,  who  is  executor  to  the 
good  doctor  departed;  and  our  rascally 
porter,  I  believe,  is  fallen  fast  asleep 
with  the  black  cloth  and  sconces,  or  he 
had  been  here,  and  we  might  have  been 
tacking  up  by  this  time. — Sir,  says  I, 
pray  be  advised  by  a  friend,  and  make 
the  best  of  your  speed  out  of  my  doors, 
for  I  hear  my  wife's  voice  (which,  by 
the  by,  is  pretty  distinguishable),  and 
in  that  corner  of  the  room  stands  a  good 
cudgel,  which  somebody  has  felt  before 
now;  if  that  light  in  her  hands,  and  she 
know  the  business  you  come  about,  with- 
out consulting  the  stars,  I  can  assure 
you  it  will  be  employed  very  much  to 
the  detriment  of  your  person. — Sir, 
cries  he,  bowing  with  great  civility,  I 
perceive  extreme  grief  for  the  loss  of 
the  doctor  disorders  you  a  little  at  pres- 
ent, but  early  in  the  morning  I  will  wait 
on  you  with  all  the  necessary  mate- 
rials. ... 


300  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

**Well,  once  more  I  got  my  door 
closed,  and  prepared  for  bed,  in  hopes 
of  a  little  repose  after  so  many  ruffling 
adventures;  just  as  I  was  putting  out 
my  light  in  order  to  it,  another  bounces 
as  hard  as  he  can  knock;  I  open  the 
window  and  ask  who  is  there  and  what 
he  wants  1  I  am  Ned,  the  sexton,  replies 
he,  and  come  to  know  whether  the  doctor 
left  any  orders  for  a  funeral  sermon, 
and  where  he  is  to  be  laid,  and  whether 
his  grave  is  to  be  plain  or  bricked! — 
Why,  sirrah,  say  I,  you  know  me  well 
enough;  you  know  I  am  not  dead,  and 
how  dare  you  affront  me  after  this  man- 
ner?— Alackaday,  sir,  replies  the  fellow, 
why  it  is  in  print,  and  the  whole  town 
knows  you  are  dead;  why,  there  is  Mr. 
White,  the  joiner,  is  fitting  screws  to 
your  coffin ;  he  will  be  here  with  it  in  an 
instant:  he  was  afraid  you  would  have 
wanted  it  before  this  time.  ...  In 
short,  what  with  undertakers,  embalm- 
ers,  joiners,  sextons,  and  your  damned 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     301 

elegy  hawkers  upon  a  late  practitioner 
in  physic  and  astrology,  I  got  not  one 
wink  of  sleep  the  whole  night,  nor  scarce 
a  moment's  rest  ever  since.  .  .  . 

*^I  could  not  stir  out  of  doors  for  the 
space  of  three  months  after  this,  but 
presently  one  comes  up  to  me  in  the 
street,  Mr.  Partridge,  that  coffin  you  was 
last  buried  in,  I  have  not  yet  been  paid 
for:  Doctor,  cries  another  dog,  how  do 
you  think  people  can  live  by  making  of 
graves  for  nothing?  next  time  you  die, 
you  may  even  toll  out  the  bell  yourself 
for  Ned.  A  third  rogue  tips  me  by  the 
elbow,  and  wonders  how  I  have  the  con- 
science to  sneak  abroad  without  paying 
my  funeral  expenses. — Lord,  says  one,  I 
durst  have  swore  that  was  honest  Dr. 
Partridge,  my  old  friend,  but,  poor  man, 
he  is  gone. — I  beg  your  pardon,  says 
another,  you  look  so  like  my  old  ac- 
quaintance that  I  used  to  consult  on 
some  private  occasions ;  but,  alack,  he  is 
gone  the  way  of  all  flesh. — Look,  look, 


302  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

look,  cries  a  third,  after  a  competent 
space  of  staring  at  me,  would  not  one 
think  our  neighbour,  the  almanack- 
maker,  was  crept  out  of  his  grave,  to 
take  the  other  peep  at  the  stars  in  this 
world,  and  shew  how  much  he  is  im- 
proved in  fortune-telling  by  having 
taken  a  journey  to  the  other?  ... 

**My  poor  wife  is  run  almost  dis- 
tracted with  being  called  widow  Par- 
tridge, when  she  knows  it  is  false;  and 
once  a  term  she  is  cited  into  the  court  to 
take  out  letters  of  administration.  But 
the  greatest  grievance  is  a  paltry  quack 
that  takes  up  my  calling  just  under  my 
nose,  and  in  his  printed  directions,  with 
N.  B. — says  he  lives  in  the  house  of  the 
late  ingenious  Mr.  John  Partridge,  an 
eminent  practitioner  in  leather,  physic, 
and  astrology.  ..." 

The  astrologer,  forgetting  to  refer  to 
the  stars  for  evidence,  indignantly  de- 
clared himself  to  be  alive,  and  Swift -s 
returning  ^  ^  Vindication  of  Isaac  Bicker- 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     303 

staff,  Esq.,  against  what  is  objected  to 
by  Mr.  Partridge  in  his  Almanack  for 
the  present  year,  1709,  by  the  said  Isaac 
Bickerstaff,  Esq.,''  complains: 

^^Mr.  Partridge  has  been  lately 
pleased  to  treat  me  after  a  very  rough 
manner  in  that  which  is  called  his  alma- 
nack for  the  present  year  .  .  .  [regard- 
ing] my  predictions,  which  foretold  the 
death  of  Mr.  Partridge  to  happen  on 
March  29,  1708.  This  he  is  pleased  to 
contradict  absolutely  in  the  almanack  he 
has  published  for  the  present  year.  .  .  . 

^'Without  entering  into  criticisms  of 
chronology  about  the  hour  of  his  death, 
I  shall  only  prove  that  Mr.  Partridge  is 
not  alive.  And  my  first  argument  is 
this :  about  a  thousand  gentlemen  having 
bought  his  almanacks  for  this  year, 
merely  to  find  what  he  said  against  me, 
at  every  line  they  read,  they  would  lift 
up  their  eyes,  and  cry  out  betwixt  rage 
and  laughter,  Hhey  were  sure  no  man 
alive  ever  writ  such  damned  stuff  as 


304  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

this. '  Neither  did  I  ever  hear  that  opin- 
ion disputed :  .  .  .  Therefore,  if  an  un- 
informed carcase  walks  still  about  and 
is  pleased  to  call  himself  Partridge,  Mr. 
Bickerstaff  does  not  think  himself  any 
way  answerable  for  that.  Neither  had 
the  said  carcase  any  right  to  beat  the 
poor  boy  who  happened  to  pass  by  it  in 
the  street,  crying,  ^A  full  and  true  ac- 
count of  Dr.  Partridge's  death,'  etc. 

'^  .  .  I  will  plainly  prove  him  to  be 
dead,  out  of  his  own  almanack  for  this 
year,  and  from  the  very  passage  which 
he  produces  to  make  us  think  him  alive. 
He  there  says  ^he  is  not  only  now  alive, 
but  was  also  alive  upon  that  very  29th 
of  March  which  I  foretold  he  should  die 
on' :  by  this  he  declares  his  opinion  that 
a  man  may  be  alive  now  who  was  not 
alive  a  twelvemonth  ago.  And  indeed 
there  lies  the  sophistry  of  his  argument. 
He  dares  not  assert  he  was  alive  ever 
since  that  29th  of  March,  but  that  he  '  is 
now  alive  and  was  so  on  that  day':  I 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     305 

grant  the  latter;  for  he  did  not  die  till 
night,  as  appears  by  the  printed  account 
of  his  death,  in  a  letter  to  a  lord;  and 
whether  he  be  since  revived,  I  leave  the 
world  to  judge.  .  .  .'' 

The  joke  had  gained  its  end;  the  as- 
trologer and  philomath  had  been  ridi- 
culed out  of  existence.  But  the  name 
of  the  ^^astrological  'squire"  was  in 
everybody's  mouth;  and  when  in  April, 
1709,  Steele  began  ^'The  Tatler,"  Isaac 
Bickerstaff,  Esquire,  spoke  in  the  dedi- 
cation of  a  gentleman  who  ^4iad  written 
Predictions,  and  Two  or  Three  other 
Pieces  in  my  Name,  which  had  rendered 
it  famous  through  all  Parts  of  Europe; 
and  by  an  inimitable  Spirit  and  Hu- 
mour, raised  it  to  as  high  a  Pitch  of 
Reputation  as  it  could  possibly  arrive 
at." 

The  Inquisition  in  Portugal  had,  with 
utmost  gravity,  condemned  Bickerstaff 's 
predictions  and  the  readers  of  them,  and 
had  burnt  his  predictions.     The  Com- 

20 


306  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

pany  of  Stationers  in  London  obtained 
in  1709  an  injunction  against  the  issuing 
of  any  almanac  by  John  Partridge,  as  if 
in  fact  he  were  dead. 

If  the  fame  of  this  foolery  was 
through  all  parts  of  Europe,  it  must  also 
have  crossed  to  the  English  colonies  of 
America,  and  by  reference  to  this  fact 
we  may  explain  the  curious  literary  par- 
allel Poor  Richard's  Almanac  affords. 
Twenty-five  years  later  Benjamin 
Franklin  played  the  selfsame  joke  in 
Philadelphia. 

Franklin  was  but  two  years  old  when 
Swift  and  his  Bickerstaff  coadjutors 
were  jesting.  But  by  the  time  he  had 
grown  and  wandered  to  Philadelphia 
and  become  a  journeyman  printer — by 
1733 — Addison,  Steele,  Prior,  and  Con- 
greve  had  died,  and  Swift's  wonder- 
ful mind  was  turned  upon  and  eating 
itself  in  the  silent  deanery  of  St.  Pat- 
rick's. 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     307 

Conditions  about  him  gave  Franklin 
every  opportunity  for  the  jest.  The 
almanac  in  the  America  of  1733  had 
even  greater  acceptance  than  the  like 
publication  of  England  in  Isaac  Bicker- 
staff  ^s  day.  No  output  of  the  colonial 
press,  not  even  the  publication  of  theo- 
logical tracts,  was  so  frequent  or  so  re- 
munerative. It  was  the  sole  annual 
which  commonly  penetrated  the  farm- 
house of  the  colonists,  where  it  hung  in 
neighborly  importance  near  the  Bible, 
Fox's  '^Book  of  Martyrs, '^  and  Jona- 
than Edwards 's  tractate  on  * '  The  Free- 
dom of  the  Human  Will."  And  it  had 
uses.  Besides  furnishing  a  calendar, 
weather  prophecies,  and  jokes,  it  added 
receipts  for  cooking,  pickling,  dyeing, 
and  in  many  ways  was  the  *^  Useful 
Companion"  its  title-page  proclaimed. 

So  keen,  practical,  and  energetic  a 
nature  as  Franklin's  could  not  let  the 
opportunity  pass  for  turning  a  penny, 
and    with    the    inimitable    adaptability 


308  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

that  marked  him  all  his  life  he  begins  his 
Poor  Eichard  of  1733 : 

**  Courteous  Eeader,  I  might  in  this 
place  attempt  to  gain  thy  favour  by  de- 
claring that  I  write  Almanacks  with  no 
other  view  than  that  of  the  publick  good, 
but  in  this  I  should  not  be  sincere ;  and 
men  are  now-a-days  too  wise  to  be  de- 
ceiv  'd  by  pretences,  how  specious  soever. 
The  plain  truth  of  the  matter  is,  I  am 
excessive  poor,  and  my  wife,  good 
woman,  is,  I  tell  her,  excessive  proud; 
she  can  not  bear,  she  says,  to  sit  spin- 
ning in  her  shift  of  ■  tow,  while  I  do 
nothing  but  gaze  at  the  stars;  and  has 
threatened  more  than  once  to  burn  all 
my  books  and  rattling-traps  (as  she 
calls  my  instruments),  if  I  do  not  make 
some  profitable  use  of  them  for  the  good 
of  my  family.  The  printer  has  offered 
me  some  considerable  share  of  the 
profits,  and  I  have  thus  began  to  comply 
with  my  dame's  desire. 

*^  Indeed,  this  motive  would  have  had 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     309 

force  enough  to  have  made  me  publish 
an  Almanack  many  years  since,  had  it 
not  been  overpowered  by  my  regard  for 
my  good  friend  and  fellow-student,  Mr. 
Titan  Leeds,  whose  interest  I  was  ex- 
treamly  unwilling  to  hurt.  But  this 
obstacle  (I  am  far  from  speaking  it  with 
pleasure)  is  soon  to  be  removed,  since 
inexorable  death,  who  was  never  known 
to  respect  merit,  has  already  prepared 
the  mortal  dart,  the  fatal  sister  has 
already  extended  her  destroying  shears, 
and  that  ingenious  man  must  soon  be 
taken  from  us.  He  dies,  by  my  calcula- 
tion, made  at  his  request,  on  Oct.  17, 
1733,  3  ho.  29  m.,  p.m.,  at  the  very  instant 
of  the  6  of  O  and  ?  .  By  his  own  calcu- 
lation he  will  survive  till  the  26th  of 
the  same  month.  This  small  difference 
between  us  we  have  disputed  whenever 
we  have  met  these  nine  years  past ;  but 
at  length  he  is  inclinable  to  agree  with 
my  judgment.  Which  of  us  is  most 
exact,  a  little  time  will  now  determine. 


310  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

As,  therefore,  these  Provinces  may  not 
longer  expect  to  see  any  of  his  perform- 
ances after  this  year,  I  think  myself  free 
to  take  up  my  task,  and  request  a  share 
of  publick  encouragement,  which  I  am 
the  more  apt  to  hope  for  on  this  account, 
that  the  buyer  of  my  Almanack  may 
consider  himself  not  only  as  purchasing 
an  useful  utensil,  but  as  performing  an 
act  of  charity  to  his  poor 

**  Friend  and  servant, 

*^R.  Saunders.'' 

Franklin  had  a  more  eager  biter  than 
Partridge  proved  to  Bickerstaff 's  bait, 
and  Titan  Leeds,  in  his  American  Al- 
manack for  1734,  showed  how  uneasy 
was  the  hook: 

'  ^  Kind  Reader,  Perhaps  it  may  be  ex- 
pected that  I  should  say  something  con- 
cerning an  Almanack  printed  for  the 
Year  1733,  said  to  be  writ  by  Poor 
Richard  or  Richard  Saunders,  who  for 
want  of  other  matter  was  pleased  to  tell 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     311 

his  Eeaders,  that  he  had  calculated  my 
Nativity,  and  from  thence  predicts  my 
Death  to  be  the  17th  of  October,  1733. 
At  29  min.  past  3  a-clock  in  the  After- 
noon, and  that  these  Provinces  may  not 
expect  to  see  any  more  of  his  (Titan 
Leeds)  Performances,  and  this  precise 
Predicter,  who  predicts  to  a  Minute, 
proposes  to  succeed  me  in  Writing  of 
Almanacks;  but  notwithstanding  his 
false  Prediction,  I  have  by  the  Mercy 
of  God  lived  to  write  a  diary  for  the 
Year  1734,  and  to  publish  the  Folly  and 
Ignorance  of  this  presumptuous  Author. 
Nay,  he  adds  another  gross  Falsehood 
in  his  Almanack,  viz. — That  by  my  own 
Calculation,  I  shall  survive  until  the 
26th  of  the  said  Month  (October),  which 
is  as  untrue  as  the  former,  for  I  do  not 
pretend  to  that  Knowledge,  altho '  he  has 
usurpt  the  Knowledge  of  the  Almighty 
herein,  and  manifested  himself  a  Fool 
and  a  Lyar.  And  by  the  mercy  of  God 
I  have  lived  to  survive  this  conceited 


312  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Scriblers  Day  and  Minute  whereon  he 
has  predicted  my  Death ;  and  as  I  have 
supply ed  my  Country  with  Almanacks 
for  three  seven  Years  by  past,  to  gen- 
eral Satisfaction,  so  perhaps  I  may  live 
to  write  when  his  Performances  are 
Dead.  Thus  much  from  your  annual 
Friend,  Titan  Leeds,  October  18,  1733, 
3  ho.  33min.  P.M.'' 

'*.  .  .  In  the  preface  to  my  last  Alma- 
nack,'' wrote  Franklin,  in  genuine 
humor,  in  Poor  Eichard  for  1734,  ^^I 
foretold  the  death  of  my  dear  old  friend 
and  fellow-student,  the  learned  and  in- 
genious Mr.  Titan  Leeds,  which  was 
to  be  the  17th  of  October,  1733,  3  h., 
29  m.,  P.M.,  at  the  very  instant  of  the 
oof  O  and  ^  .  By  his  own  calculation,  he 
was  to  survive  till  the  26th  of  the  same 
month,  and  expire  in  the  time  of  the 
eclipse,  near  11  o'clock  a.m.  At  which 
of  these  times  he  died,  or  whether  he  be 
really  yet  dead,  I  cannot  at  this  present 
writing  positively  assure  my  readers; 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     313 

forasmuch  as  a  disorder  in  my  own 
family  demanded  my  presence,  and 
would  not  permit  me,  as  I  had  intended, 
to  be  with  him  in  his  last  moments,  to 
receive  his  last  embrace,  to  close  his 
eyes,  and  do  the  duty  of  a  friend  in  per- 
forming the  last  offices  to  the  departed. 
Therefore  it  is  that  I  cannot  positively 
affirm  whether  he  be  dead  or  not;  for 
the  stars  only  show  to  the  skilful  what 
will  happen  in  the  natural  and  universal 
chain  of  causes  and  effects ;  but  'tis  well 
known,  that  the  events  which  would 
otherwise  certainly  happen,  at  certain 
times,  in  the  course  of  nature,  are  some- 
times set  aside  or  postponed,  for  wise 
and  good  reasons,  by  the  immediate  par- 
ticular disposition  of  Providence ;  which 
particular  disposition  the  stars  can  by 
no  means  discover  or  foreshow.  There 
is,  however  (and  I  can  not  speak  it  with- 
out sorrow) ,  there  is  the  strongest  prob- 
ability that  my  dear  friend  is  no  more; 
for  there  appears  in  his  name,  as  I  am 


314  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

assured,  an  Almanack  for  the  year  1734, 
in  which  I  am  treated  in  a  very  gross 
and  unhandsome  manner,  in  which  I  am 
called  a  false  predicter,  an  ignorant,  a 
conceited  scribbler,  a  fool  and  a  lyar. 
Mr.  Leeds  was  too  well  bred  to  use  any 
man  so  indecently  and  so  scurrilously, 
and  moreover  his  esteem  and  affection 
for  me  was  extraordinary;  so  that  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  pamphlet  may  be  only 
a  contrivance  of  somebody  or  other,  who 
hopes,  perhaps,  to  sell  two  or  three 
years '  Almanacks  still,  by  the  sole  force 
and  virtue  of  Mr.  Leeds'  name.  But, 
certainly,  to  put  words  into  the  mouth 
of  a  gentleman  and  a  man  of  letters 
against  his  friend,  which  the  meanest 
and  most  scandalous  of  the  people 
might  be  ashamed  to  utter  even  in  a 
drunken  quarrel,  is  an  unpardonable 
injury  to  his  memory,  and  an  imposition 
upon  the  publick. 

''Mr.  Leeds  was  not  only  profoundly 
skilful  in  the  useful  science  he  profess  'd, 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     315 

but  he  was  a  man  of  exemplary  sobriety, 
a  most  sincere  friend,  and  an  exact  per- 
former of  his  word.  These  valuable 
qualifications,  with  many  others,  so 
miich  endeared  him  to  me,  that  although 
it  should  be  so,  that,  contrary  to  all  prob- 
ability, contrary  to  my  prediction  and 
his  own,  he  might  possibly  be  yet  alive, 
yet  my  loss  of  honour,  as  a  prognosti- 
cator,  cannot  afford  me  so  much  morti- 
fication as  his  life,  health,  and  safety 
would  give  me  joy  and  satisfac- 
tion. .  .  .'» 

Again,  Leeds,  in  The  American  Alma- 
nack for  1735,  returns  Franklin's  jest: 

^^Corteous  and  Kind  Eeader:  My 
Almanack  being  in  its  usual  Method, 
needs  no  Explanation;  but  perhaps  it 
may  be  expected  by  some  that  I  shall 
say  something  concerning  Poor  Richard, 
or  otherwise  Eichard  Saunders's  Alma- 
nack, which  I  suppose  was  printed  in 
the  Year  1733  for  the  ensuing  Year 
1734,  wherein  he  useth  me  with  such 


316  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

good  Manners,  I  can  hardly  find  what  to 
say  to  him,  without  it  is  to  advise  him 
not  to  be  too  proud  because  by  his  Prae- 
dicting  my  Death,  and  his  writing  an 
Almanack.  .  .  . 

*^But  if  Falsehood  and  Inginuity  be 
so  rewarded.  What  may  he  expect  if 
ever  he  be  in  a  capacity  to  publish  that 
that  is  either  Just  or  according  to  Art? 
Therefore  I  shall  say  little  more  about 
it  than,  as  a  Friend,  to  advise  he  will 
never  take  upon  him  to  praedict  or 
ascribe  any  Person's  Death,  till  he  has 
learned  to  do  it  better  than  he  did 
before.  .  .  .'' 

To  this  exhortation  Franklin  makes 
the  following  gay  sally  in  Poor  Eichard 
for  1735. 

'  * .  .  .  "Whatever  may  be  the  musick  of 
the  spheres,  how  great  soever  the  har- 
mony of  the  stars,  'tis  certain  there  is 
no  harmony  among  the  star-gazers :  but 
they  are  perpetually  growling  and  snarl- 
ing at  one  another  like  strange  curs,  or 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     317 

like  some  men  at  their  wives.  I  had  re- 
solved to  keep  the  peace  on  my  own  part, 
and  offend  none  of  them;  and  I  shall 
persist  in  that  resolution.  But  having 
received  much  abuse  from  Titan  Leeds 
deceased  (Titan  Leeds  when  living 
would  not  have  used  me  so) :  I  say, 
having  received  much  abuse  from  .the 
ghost  of  Titan  Leeds,  who  pretends  to 
be  still  living,  and  to  write  Almanacks 
in  spight  of  me  and  my  predictions,  I 
can  not  help  saying,  that  tho'  I  take  it 
patiently,  I  take  it  very  unkindly.  And 
whatever  he  may  pretend,  'tis  undoubt- 
edly true  that  he  is  really  defunct  and 
dead.  First,  because  the  stars  are  sel- 
dom disappointed,  never  but  in  the  case 
of  wise  men,  sapiens  dominabitur  asties, 
and  they  foreshadowed  his  death  at  the 
time  I  predicted  it.  Secondly,  'twas 
requisite  and  necessary  he  should  die 
punctually  at  that  time  for  the  honor  of 
astrology,  the  art  professed  both  by  him 
and  his  father  before  him.    Thirdly,  'tis 


318  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

plain  to  every  one  that  reads  his  two 
last  Almanacks  (for  1734  and  '35),  that 
they  are  not  written  with  that  life  his 
performances  used  to  be  written  with; 
the  wit  is  low  and  flat;  the  little  hints 
dull  and  spiritless;  nothing  smart  in 
them  but  Hudibras's  verses  against 
astrology  at  the  heads  of  the  months  in 
the  last,  which  no  astrologer  but  a  dead 
one  would  have  inserted,  and  no  man 
living  would  or  could  write  such  stuff 
as  the  rest.  But  lastly,  I  shall  convince 
him  from  his  own  words  that  he  is  dead 
(ex  ore  suo  condemnatus  est) ;  for  in 
his  preface  to  his  Almanack  for  1734, 
he  says:  ^Saunders  adds  another  gross 
falsehood  in  his  Almanack,  viz.,  that  by 
my  own  calculation,  I  shall  survive  until 
the  26th  of  the  said  month,  October,  1733, 
which  is  as  untrue  as  the  former. '  Now 
if  it  be  as  Leeds  says,  untrue  and  a 
gross  falsehood,  that  he  survived  till  the 
26th  of  October,  1733,  then  it  is  certainly 
true  that  he  died  before  that  time ;  and 
if  he  died  before  that  time  he  is  dead 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     319 

now  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  any- 
thing lie  may  say  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding. And  at  what  time  before 
the  26th  is  it  so  likely  he  should  die,  as 
at  the  time  by  me  predicted,  viz.,  the 
17th  of  October  aforesaid!  But  if  some 
people  will  walk  and  be  troublesome 
after  death,  it  may  perhaps  be  borne 
with  a  little,  because  it  cannot  well  be 
avoided,  unless  one  would  be  at  the 
pains  and  expense  of  laying  them  in  the 
Eed  Sea ;  however,  they  should  not  pre- 
sume too  much  upon  the  liberty  allowed 
them.  I  know  confinement  must  needs 
be  mighty  irksome  to  the  free  spirit  of 
an  astronomer,  and  I  am  too  compas- 
sionate to  proceed  suddenly  to  extremi- 
ties with  it;  nevertheless,  tho'  I  resolve 
with  reluctance,  I  shall  not  long  defer, 
if  it  does  not  speedily  learn  to  treat  its 
living  friends  with  better  manners. 
^^I  am, 

^*  Courteous  reader, 
**  Your  obliged  friend  and  servant, 

'^E.  Saunders." 


320  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Here  for  the  nonce  the  jeu  d 'esprit 
ended.  In  carrying  the  matter  further 
Franklin  hardly  showed  the  taste  of 
Bickerstaff.  The  active,  bristling,  self- 
assertive  0i3f)i^  which  characterized  his 
early  manhood  led  him  further  on  to 
stand  over  the  very  grave  of  Leeds. 
Before  he  made  his  Almanac  for  1740 
his  competitor  had  died.  But  even 
Leeds  dead  he  seemed  to  deem  fair  play. 

"October  7,  1739. 
**  Courteous  Eeader:  You  may  re- 
member that  in  my  first  Almanack,  pub- 
lished for  the  year  1733,  I  predicted  the 
death  of  my  dear  friend.  Titan  Leeds, 
Philomat,  to  happen  that  year  on  the 
17th  day  of  October,  3  h.  29  m.  p.m.  The 
good  man,  it  seems,  died  accordingly. 
But  W.  B.  and  A.  B.  [*]  have  continued 
to  publish  Almanacks  in  his  name  ever 
since ;   asserting  for  some  years  that  he 

*  The  printers,  William  and  Andrew  Bradford. 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     321 

was  still  living.  At  length  when  the 
truth  could  no  longer  be  concealed  from 
the  world,  they  confessed  his  death  in 
their  Almanack  for  1739,  but  pretended 
that  he  died  not  till  last  year,  and  that 
before  his  departure  he  had  furnished 
them  with  calculations  for  7  years  to 
come. — Ah,  my  friends,  these  are  poor 
shifts  and  thin  disguises;  of  which 
indeed  I  should  have  taken  little  or  no 
notice,  if  you  had  not  at  the  same  time 
accused  me  as  a  false  predictor;  an 
aspersion  that  the  more  affects  me  as  my 
whole  livelyhood  depends  on  a  contrary 
character. 

'*But  to  put  this  matter  beyond  dis- 
pute, I  shall  acquaint  the  world  with  a 
fact,  as  strange  and  surprising  as  it  is 
true ;  being  as  follows,  viz. : 

^  ^  On  the  4th  instant,  toward  midnight, 
as  I  sat  in  my  little  study  writing  this 
Preface,  I  fell  fast  asleep;  and  con- 
tinued in  that  condition  for  some  time, 
without    dreaming    any    thing,    to    my 

21 


322  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

knowledge.  On  awaking  I  found  lying 
before  me  the  following,  viz. : 

*^  'Deak  Friend  Saunders:  My  re- 
spect for  you  continues  even  in  this  sep- 
arate state;  and  I  am  griev'd  to  see  the 
aspersions  thrown  on  you  by  the  malevo- 
lence of  avaricious  publishers  of  Alma- 
nacks, who  envy  your  success.  They  say 
your  prediction  of  my  death  in  1733  was 
false,  and  they  pretend  that  I  remained 
alive  many  years  after.  But  I  do  hereby 
certify  that  I  did  actually  die  at  that 
time,  precisely  at  the  hour  you  men- 
tioned, with  a  variation  only  of  5  min. 
53  sec,  which  must  be  allowed  to  be  no 
great  matter  in  such  cases.  And  I  do 
further  declare  that  I  furnished  them 
with  no  calculations  of  the  planets' 
motions,  etc.,  seven  years  after  my 
death,  as  they  are  pleased  to  give  out: 
so  that  the  stuff  they  publish  as  an  Alma- 
nack in  my  name  is  no  more  mine  than 
'tis  yours. 

**  *You  will  wonder,  perhaps,  how  this 


HUMORS  OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     323 

paper  comes  written  on  your  table.  You 
must  know  that  no  separate  spirits  are 
under  any  confinement  till  after  the  final 
settlement  of  all  accounts.  In  the  mean- 
time we  wander  where  we  please,  visit 
our  old  friends,  observe  their  actions, 
enter  sometimes  into  their  imaginations, 
and  give  them  hints  waking  or  sleeping 
that  may  be  of  advantage  to  them. 
Finding  you  asleep,  I  entered  your  left 
nostril,  ascended  into  your  brain,  found 
out  where  the  ends  of  those  nerves  were 
fastened  that  move  your  right  hand  and 
fingers,  by  the  help  of  which  I  am  now 
writing  unknown  to  you ;  but  when  you 
open  your  eyes  you  will  see  that  the 
hand  written  is  mine,  tho'  wrote  with 
yours. 

^^  ^The  people  of  this  infidel  age,  per- 
haps, will  hardly  believe  this  story.  But 
you  may  give  them  these  three  signs  by 
which  they  shall  be  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  it. — About  the  middle  of  June 


324  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

next,    J.    J n,*    Philomat,    shall    be 

openly  reconciled  to  the  Church  of 
Kome,  and  give  all  his  goods  and  chat- 
tels to  the  chappel,  being  perverted  by 
a  certain  country  schoolmaster.  On  the 
7th    of    September    following    my    old 

Friend   W.    B 1    shall    be    sober    9 

hours,  to  the  astonishment  of  all  his 
neighbours: — And  about  the  same  time 
W.  B.  and  A.  B.  will  publish  another 
Almanack  in  my  name,  in  spight  of  truth 
and  common  sense. 

^^  ^As  I  can  see  much  clearer  into 
futurity,  since  I  got  free  from  the  dark 
prison  of  flesh,  in  which  I  was  contin- 
ually molested  and  almost  blinded  with 
fogs  arising  from  tiff,  and  the  smoke  of 
burnt  drams ;  I  shall  in  kindness  to  you, 
frequently  give  you  information  of 
things  to  come,  for  the  improvement  of 
your  Almanack :  being.  Dear  Dick,  Your 
Affectionate  Friend, 

^^^  T.Leeds.' 

*  John  Jerman. 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     325 

^'For  my  own  part,  I  am  convinced 
that  the  above  letter  is  genuine.  If  the 
reader  doubts  of  it,  let  him  carefully 
observe  the  three  signs;  and  if  they  do 
not  actually  come  to  pass,  believe  as  he 
pleases.    I  am  his  humble  Friend, 

'^R.  Saundeks.'* 

In  this  wise  ended  Poor  Eichard's 
jest.  Franklin's  style  throughout  is  so 
simple  and  direct  that  one  is  at  first  in- 
clined to  scout  the  suggestion  that  the 
joke  is  not  entirely  original.  It  is  impos- 
sible, however,  to  suppose  that  Frank- 
lin, with  his  broad  reading,  did  not  know 
Squire  Bickerstatf 's.  The  development 
of  the  humor  is  wholly  imitated.  But 
Franklin  made  the  method  his  own  so 
thoroughly  that  his  wit  has  those  keener, 
subtler,  more  agile  qualities  which  have 
distinguished  American  from  the  slower 
and  sedater  humor  of  the  English.  In 
the  Bickerstaff  jocularity  evidences  of 
the  death  of  Partridge  are  enumerated 


326  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

in  material  surroTindings  of  a  not  too 
prosperous  London  quack.  Franklin,  on 
the  other  hand,  ironically  and  graphi- 
cally reasons  upon  supposititious  traits 
and  qualities  of  character  and  breeding. 

In  England,  Swift's  squib  having 
given  the  death-blow  to  astrology,  ^  ^  Mer- 
linus  Liberatus,  by  John  Partridge," 
was  published  years  after,  but  shorn  of 
its  specious  and  misleading  pretences. 
Franklin's  jesting  was  more  self- 
seeking. 

Not  one  of  Franklin's  biographers  or 
editors  has  referred  to  the  Bickerstaff 
joke.  Upon  the  contrary,  in  an  ^^Intro- 
duction to  Fac-simile  of  Poor  Richard's 
Almanack  for  1733,"  published  by  The 
Duodecimos  in  1894,  it  is  asserted  that 
Franklin  ^  4n  a  strain  of  delightful  satire 
upon  the  already  venerable  pretensions 
of  almanac-makers  to  foretell  the  fu- 
ture, .  .  .  disposes  of  this  difficulty  by 
a  method  so  novel,  so  ingenious,  and 
withal  of  an  illuminating  power  so  far^ 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     327 

reaching  as  to  set  the  whole  colony  talk- 
ing about  if 

It  need  hardly  be  added  that  none  of 
Swift's  biographers — all  being  English 
— ^have  hinted  at  Franklin's  pleasantry. 

The  inextinguishable  laughter — the 
true  Homeric  a^r/Jeffro?  yiXio^  — ^which  is 
the  atmosphere  of  both  incidents,  fits 
them  to  rank  with  the  imaginary  dur- 
ance of  Sancho  Panza  upon  his  island, 
or  with  Tartarin  in  Tarascon,  or,  to  go 
to  the  first  humor  of  literature,  with  the 
advance  and  retreat  of  Thersites  in  the 
council  of  Zeus-nourished  kings.  And 
in  Britain  and  America  all  our  heroes 
were  real. 

Upon  other  occasions  than  the  Saun- 
ders-Leeds jesting  Franklin  loved  play- 
ful feint;  he  had  ^^Bagatelles''  for  his 
delight.  It  was  a  quizzical  side  of  the 
character  which  made  him  the  first  of 
our  notable  American  humorists.  To 
amuse  himself  with  an  oriental  apologue 


328  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

which  he  called  ^  ^  The  Parable  of  Perse- 
cution/' he  had  the  story  bound  with  a 
Bible.  From  this  book  he  would  read 
the  legend  aloud,  amazing  his  auditors 
that  so  beautiful  a  scriptural  passage 
had  escaped  their  knowledge. 

The  form  in  which  Franklin  cast  the 
tale  is  this : 

^^And  it  came  to  pass  after  these 
things,  that  Abraham  sat  in  the  door  of 
his  tent,  about  the  going  down  of  the 
sun. 

^'And  behold  a  man,  bowed  with  age, 
came  from  the  way  of  the  wilderness, 
leaning  on  a  staff. 

^^And  Abraham  arose  and  met  him, 
and  said  unto  him,  ^Turn  in,  I  pray 
thee,  and  wash  thy  feet,  and  tarry  all 
night,  and  thou  shalt  arise  early  on  the 
morrow,  and  go  thy  way.' 

^'But  the  man  said,  'Nay,  for  I  will 
abide  under  this  tree. ' 

''And  Abraham  pressed  him  greatly: 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     329 

SO  he  turned  and  they  went  into  the  tent, 
and  Abraham  baked  unleavened  bread, 
and  they  did  eat. 

^^And  when  Abraham  saw  that  the 
man  blessed  not  God,  he  said  unto  him, 
*  Wherefore  dost  thou  not  worship  the 
most  high  God,  Creator  of  heaven  and 
earth  r 

^^And  the  man  answered  and  said,  ^I 
do  not  worship  the  God  thou  speakest  of, 
neither  do  I  call  upon  his  name;  for 
I  have  made  to  myself  a  god,  which 
abideth  alway  in  mine  house,  and  pro- 
vide tli  me  with  all  things. ' 

**And  Abraham's  zeal  was  kindled 
against  the  man,  and  he  arose  and  fell 
upon  him,  and  drove  him  forth  with 
blows  into  the  wilderness. 

^^And  at  midnight  God  called  unto 
Abraham,  saying,  ^Abraham,  where  is 
the  stranger?' 

^^And  Abraham  answered  and  said, 
*Lord,  he  would  not  worship  thee, 
neither  would  he  call  upon  thy  name; 


330  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

therefore  have  I  driven  him  out  from 
before  my  face  into  the  wilderness.' 

^'And  God  said,  'Have  I  borne  with 
him  these  hundred  and  ninety  and  eight 
years,  and  nourished  him,  and  clothed 
him,  notwithstanding  his  rebellion 
against  me;  and  couldst  not  thou,  that 
art  thyself  a  sinner,  bear  with  him  one 
night?' 

*'And  Abraham  said,  'Let  not  the 
anger  of  the  Lord  wax  hot  against  his 
servant;  lo,  I  have  sinned;  lo,  I  have 
sinned ;  forgive  me,  I  pray  thee. ' 

' '  And  Abraham  arose,  and  went  forth 
into  the  wilderness,  and  sought  dili- 
gently for  the  man,  and  found  him,  and 
returned  with  him  to  the  tent;  and 
when  he  had  treated  him  kindly,  he 
sent  him  away  on  the  morrow  with  gifts. 

''And  God  spake  again  unto  Abraham, 
saying,  'For  this  thy  sin  shall  thy  seed 
be  afflicted  four  hundred  years  in  a 
strange  land. 

"  'But  for  thy  repentance  will  I  de- 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     331 

liver  them;  and  they  shall  come  forth 
with  power,  and  with  gladness  of  heart, 
and  with  much  substance. '  '  * 

Franklin's  fine  literary  sense  and  feel- 
ing would  doubtless  have  told  him  that 
the  tale  was  oriental,  even  if  Jeremy 
Taylor,  whose  ^^  Discourse  on  the  Lib- 
erty of  Prophesying' '  it  brings  to  a 
finish,  had  not  introduced  it  with  the 
words,  '^I  end  with  a  story  which  I  find 
in  the  Jews'  book.* 

^ '  When  Abraham  sat  at  his  tent-door, 
according    to    his    custom,    waiting    to 


* "  The  Jews'  book"  is,  according  to  various 
researches,  believed  to  be  "  The  Rod  of  Judah,"  a 
rabbinical  work  presented  to  the  Senate  of  Ham- 
burg in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  carrying  the 
legend  in  its  Latin  dedication.  But  the  tale 
really  dates  back  to  the  "  Bostan,"  or  "  Tree  Gar- 
den," of  the  Persian  poet  Saadi,  who  says,  in 
another  work,  that  he  was  a  prisoner  to  the  Cru- 
saders, and  labored  in  company  with  fellow- 
captives  who  were  Jews  in  the  trenches  before 
Tripoli. 


332  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

entertain  strangers,  lie  espied  an  old 
man  stooping  and  leaning  on  his  staff, 
weary  with  age  and  travail,  coming 
toward  him,  who  was  a  hundred  years  of 
age ;  he  received  him  kindly,  washed  his 
feet,  provided  supper,  caused  him  to  sit 
down;  but,  observing  that  the  old  man 
eat  and  prayed  not,  nor  begged  for  a 
blessing  on  his  meat,  he  asked  him  why 
he  did  not  worship  the  God  of  heaven. 
The  old  man  told  him  that  he  worshipped 
the  fire  only,  and  acknowledged  no  other 
god.  At  which  answer  Abraham  grew 
so  zealously  angry  that  he  thrust  the  old 
man  out  of  his  tent,  and  exposed  him  to 
all  the  evils  of  the  night  and  an  un- 
guarded condition.  When  the  old  man 
was  gone,  God  called  to  Abraham,  and 
asked  him  where  the  stranger  was.  He 
replied,  ^I  thrust  him  away  because  he 
did  not  worship  thee.'  God  answered 
him,  '  I  have  suffered  him  these  hundred 
years,  although  he  dishonoured  me ;  and 
couldst  not  thou  endure  him  one  night, 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     333 

when  he  gave  thee  no  trouble?^  Upon 
this  saith  the  story,  Abraham  fetched 
him  back  again,  and  gave  him  hospitable 
entertainment  and  wise  instruction.  Go 
thon  and  do  likewise,  and  thy  charity 
will  be  rewarded  by  the  God  of  Abra- 
ham. ' ' 

Franklin's  pleasantries  with  this  par- 
able led  Lord  Kames  to  ask  it  of  him. 
The  fertile  Scotchman  at  once  incor- 
porated it  in  his  ^'Sketches  of  the  His- 
tory of  Man,"  and  published  it  in  1774, 
accrediting  it  to  Franklin.  '  ^  The  charge 
of  plagiarism  has,  on  this  account, ' '  says 
Bishop  Heber,  in  his  life  of  Jeremy 
Taylor,  ^^been  raised  against  Franklin; 
though  he  cannot  be  proved  to  have 
given  it  to  Lord  Kames  as  his  own  com- 
position. With  all  Franklin's  abilities 
and  amiable  qualities,"  continues  the 
clear-eyed  bishop,  ^Hhere  was  a  degree 
of  quackery  in  his  character  which  .  .  . 
has  made  the  imputation  of  such  a  theft 
more  readily  received  against  him  than 


334  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

it  would  have  been  against  most  other 
men  of  equal  eminence.'' 

In  more  finely  sensitive  writers  who 
have  treated  Franklin  there  is  a  feeling 
that  he  ^^ borrowed/'  The  words  of  the 
missionary  bishop  show  the  sentiment 
was  common  in  England  a  century  and 
a  quarter  ago.  In  our  country  the  con- 
viction was  expressed  with  more  spirit 
in  a  colloquy  *  between  a  New  Eng- 
land man  and  a  Virginian,  preserved 
in  John  Davis's  manuscript,  *^ Travels 
in  America  during  1798-99,  1800,  1801, 
1802." 

*  ^  I  obtained, ' '  wrote  Davis  of  his  visit 
to  Washington,  ^ '  accommodations  at  the 
Washington  Tavern,  which  stands  oppo- 
site the  Treasury.  At  this  tavern  I 
took  my  meals  at  the  public  table,  where 
there  was  every  day  to  be  found  a  num- 

*  Used  through  the  courtesy  of  the  editor  of 
"  The  William  and  Mary  College  Quarterly." 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     335 

ber  of  clerks,  employed  at  the  different 
offices  under  government,  together  with 
about  half-a-dozen  Virginians  and  a  few 
New  England  men.  There  was  a  per- 
petual conflict  between  these  Southern 
and  Northern  men,  and  one  night  I  was 
present  at  a  vehement  dispute,  which 
terminated  in  the  loss  of  a  horse,  a  sad- 
dle, and  bridle.  The  dispute  was  about 
Dr.  Franklin;  the  man  from  New  Eng- 
land, enthusiastic  in  what  related  to 
Franklin,  asserted  that  the  Doctor,  being 
self-taught,  was  original  in  everything 
that  he  had  ever  published. 

^^The  Virginian  maintained  that  he 
was  a  downright  plagiarist. 

^'New  England  Man. — ^Have  you  a 
horse  here,  my  friend? 

^^  Virginian. — Sir,  I  hope  you  do  not 
suppose  that  I  came  hither  on  foot  from 
Virginia.  I  have  him  in  Mr.  White's 
stable,  the  prettiest  Chickasaw  that  ever 
trod  upon  four  pasterns. 

''New  England  Man. — And  I  have  a 


336  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

bay  mare  that  I  bought  for  ninety  dol- 
lars in  hard  cash.  Now  I,  my  friend, 
will  lay  my  bay  mare  against  your  Chick- 
asaw that  Dr.  Franklin  is  not  a  pla- 
giarist. 

^ ^Virginian. — Done!  Go  it!  Waiter! 
You,  waiter! 

*^The  waiter  obeyed  the  summons, 
and,  at  the  order  of  the  Virginian, 
brought  down  a  portmanteau  contain- 
ing both  Franklin's  ^Miscellanies'  and 
Taylor's  ^Discourses.' 

*^The  New  England  man  then  read 
from  the  former  the  celebrated  parable 
against  persecution.  .  .  .  And  after  he 
had  finished  he  exclaimed  that  the 
*  writer  appeared  inspired.' 

'  *  But  the  Virginian  maintained  that  it 
all  came  to  Franklin  from  Bishop  Tay- 
lor's book,  printed  more  than  a  century 
ago.  And  the  New  England  man  read 
from  Taylor.  .  .  .  When  he  had  done 
reading,  a  laugh  ensued;  and  the  Vir- 
ginian, leaping  from  his  seat,  called  to 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     337 

Atticus,  the  waiter,  to  put  the  bay  mare 
in  the  next  stall  to  the  Chickasaw  and 
to  give  her  half  a  gallon  of  oats  more, 
upon  the  strength  of  her  having  a  new 
master ! 

'^The  New  England  man  exhibited 
strong  symptoms  of  chagrin,  but  wa- 
gered 'a  brand-new  saddle'  that  this 
celebrated  epitaph  of  Franklin's  under- 
going a  new  edition  was  original.  The 
epitaph  was  then  read: 

'  The  Body 

of 

Benjamin  Franklin,  Printer 

(Like  the  cover  of  an  old  book. 

Its  contents  torn  out, 

And  stript  of  its  lettering  and  gilding), 

Lies  here,  food  for  worms. 

Yet  the  work  itself  shall  not  be  lost, 

For  it  will  (as  he  believ'd)  appear  once  more, 

In  a  new 

And  more  beautiful  Edition, 

Corrected  and  Amended 

By 

The  Author.' 
.      22 


338  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

^  ^  The  Virginian  then  said  that  Frank- 
lin robbed  a  little  boy  of  it.  ^The  very- 
words,  sir,  are  taken  from  a  Latin  epi- 
taph written  on  a  bookseller,  by  an  Eton 
scholar. 

'  VitsB  volumine  peracto 

Hie  Finis  Jacobi  Tonson  * 

Perpoliti  Sociorum  Principis: 

Qui  velut  Obstretrix  Musarum 

In  Lucem  Edidit 

Felices  Ingenii  Partus. 

Lugete  Scriptorum  Chorus, 

Et  Frangite  Calamos! 

lUe  vester  Margine  Erasus  deletur, 

Sed  haec  postrema  Inscriptio 

Huic  Primce  Mortis  PagincB 

Imprimatur, 

Ne  Prcelo  Sepulchri  commissus 

Ipse  Editor  careat  Titulo: 

Hie  Jacet  Bibliopola 

Folio  vitae  delapso 

Expeetans  novam  Editionem 

Auctoriem  et  Emendatiorem/ 

*  This  Jacob  Tonson  will  be  recalled  as  the  chief 
bookseller  (publisher)  in  London  for  some  years 
prior  to  his  death,  2  April,  1736. 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     339 

*^And  then,  says  Mr.  Davis,  the  bet 
was  awarded  the  Virginian.  He  re- 
ferred to  the  ^Grentleman's  Magazine' 
for  February,  1736,  where  the  Latin 
inscription  accredited  to  the  Eton 
scholar,  with  a  translation  by  a  Mr. 
P ,  was  to  be  found. 

'^  After  this  second  decision  the  Vir- 
ginian declared  that  he  would  lay  his 
boots  against  the  New  Englander's  that 
Franklin's  pretended  discovery  of  calm- 
ing troubled  waters  by  pouring  upon 
them  oil  might  be  found  in  the  third 
book  of  Bede's  ^History  of  the  Church;' 
or  that  his  facetious  essay  on  the  air- 
bath  is  produced,  word  for  word,  from 
Aubrey's  ^Miscellanies.'  But  the  New 
Englander,  who  had  lost  horse,  saddle, 
and  bridle,  declined  to  run  the  risk  on 
Dr.  Franklin  of  going  home  without  his 
boots." 

There  are  other  instances  of  the 
philosopher's  palpable  taking.    To  one. 


340  AMERICAN   THUMB-PRINTS 

Franklin's  editor,  Mr.  Bigelow,  adverts 
when  he  notes  in  Franklin's  letter  of 
November  5,  1789,  to  Alexander  Smith: 
^^I  find  by  your  letter  that  every  man 
has  patience  enough  to  hear  calmly  and 
coolly  the  injuries  done  to  other  people. ' ' 
The  marvellous  precision  and  terseness 
of  Swift — that  keen,  incisive  melancholy 
wit  of  his  from  which  great  writers  have 
taken  ideas  and  phrases  as  gold-seekers 
have  picked  nuggets  from  California 
earth — Swift  had  more  finely  said  what 
Franklin  stumbled  after  when  he  wrote 
that  he  *^  never  knew  a  man  who  could 
not  bear  the  misfortunes  of  another  like 
a  Christian." 

Franklin  had  originality.  His  many 
devices  are  evidence.  But  careful  study 
of  that  which  brought  him  much  public 
attention — bagatelles  by  which  he  at- 
tached himself  to  popular  affection 
— show  all-round  appropriation.  He 
loved  to  stand  in  public  light — to  hear 
applause  of  himself.    He  loved  to  quiz 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     341 

his  listeners,  to  bamboozle  his  readers. 
If  his  buying  and  applauding  public 
believed  Poor  Richard's  proverbs 
sprang  from  his  active  mind  instead  of 
having  been  industriously  gathered  from 
old  English  and  other  folk  proverbs  and 
dyed  with  his  practical  humor — ''the 
wisdom  of  many  ages  and  nations/'  as 
Franklin  afterwards  put  it — that  was 
their  blunder  by  which  he  would  gain 
gold  as  well  as  glory.  Even  ''Richard 
Saunders ' '  was  not  original  with  Frank- 
lin. It  was  the  pen-name  of  a  compiler 
of  English  almanacs.  The  young 
printer  busily  working  his  press  doubt- 
less chuckled  at  his  deceptions — in  spite 
of  his  filched  maxim  about  honesty  being 
the  best  policy. 

And  it  went  with  him  all  through  life. 
His  love  of  public  applause,  his  desire 
to  accumulate  and  his  gleaming,  quizzi- 
cal humor  led  him  on.  His  wonderful 
ease  at  adopting  others'  products  and 
making  them  his  own  one  may  admire 


OF  THE 

OF 


342  AMERICAN  THUMB-PRINTS 

if  he  turn  his  eyes  from  the  moral  sig- 
nificance, the  downright  turpitude  of 
not  acknowledging  the  source.  Frank- 
lin's practice  would  certainly  not  stand 
the  test  of  universal  application  which 
his  great  contemporary,  Kant,  de- 
manded of  all  acts. 

There  has  been  of  late  endeavor  to 
rehabilitate  Franklin's  industrious  com- 
mon sense  and  praise  its  circumstance. 
So  late  as  last  year  our  American  am- 
bassador to  St.  James  addressed  stu- 
dents of  the  Workingmen's  College  in 
London  upon  the  energy,  self-help,  and 
sense  of  reality  of  this  early  American, 
and  found  the  leading  features  of  his 
character  to  be  honesty  ( !)  and  respect 
for  facts. 

It  is,  after  all,  a  certain  grace  in- 
herent in  Franklin,  a  human  feeling,  a 
genial  simplicity  and  candor,  a  direct- 
ness of  utterance  and  natural  unfolding 
of  his  matter  which  are  his  perennial 


HUMORS   OF   BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN     343 

value  in  a  literary  way,  and  wliicli  war- 
rant the  estimate  of  an  English  critic 
who  calls  him  the  most  readable  writer 
yet  known  on  the  western  side  of  the 
Atlantic. 


THE   END 


^Hli   BOOK  ON  THE  ^ATE  DUe.                    p^uRTH 
OVERDUE.  -         -  = 


FE3  17    1933 


MAR    3  1633 


¥0'^ 


RTURSBJ  BIOlOGY 

OCT  13  78 

REC.C1R.0CT  23  '^ 


LD  21-50rn-l,'3*- 


YB  76199 


20825fi 


/ 


'i:^y^       .  _  ,1 


